


Odd Socks

by Roccolinde



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, tumblr prompt fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-01-13 06:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 31,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21239681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde
Summary: A place to collect all my Tumblr prompt fills, at least the ones I can find.





	1. Pregnancy Fic + Arranged Marriage AU

**Author's Note:**

> I have been swearing for months I would bring my Tumblr prompts over to ao3 so I could actually find them again, and then promptly failing to do so. But the latest ficlet was over 2000 words, so I figured if I didn't do it now I never would.

In the years to come, Jaime would say that the marriage was entirely the fault of his wife. He’d been doing perfectly well avoiding all marital entanglements, despite his father’s plotting, until some stubborn sword-wench arrived in King’s Landing and upended everything. Brienne, for her part, would bluntly point out that she sparred at night specifically to _avoid _attention from half the knights in the city, and if he’d left when she’d asked him to, his father never would have found them and arranged their marriage before either of them had time to object.

“I’m grateful for my stubbornness, then,” he would reply, usually accompanied by a kiss to her cheek that inevitably made her blush.

But that was several years into the future. The day of their wedding, it was a toss-up over who was less impressed with the experience. She’d stared stonily at him the entire time they were in the sept, and spoke no words to him or anyone else during the feast. Jaime leaned towards her when Tyrion began a particularly long-winded speech.

“Follow me,” he whispered, snagging her hand beneath the table; she pulled free immediately, the hand above the table closing over her knife. Stubborn beast. “If we leave now, we can avoid the bedding. Unless you’re looking forward to it?” His eyes flicked over her appraisingly. “Mayhaps you’d enjoy it, being stripped of your clothes and manhandled. But if that’s the case–” he licked his lips here, deliberately lewd and goading, “I’m strong enough to do it myself.”

“I would kill you where you stood if you tried,” she replied levelly, glancing around the hall and weighing her options. “But very well.”

And so they had slipped from the hall and towards their chambers, where Jaime poured himself a goblet of wine and asked his new wife if she’d like one as well. She stood stiffly by the door, looking rather like a startled creature but refusing to run away.

“No, thank you, Ser Jaime.”

“Relax, wench,” he said, taking a drink and sprawling into a chair. “I won’t bed an unwilling woman. Your virtue is safe with me. I’ll prick my finger so people will presume your duty done.”

“I have no maidenhead,” she said boldly.

That _was_ a surprise.

“Man? Woman?” he paused. “Horse?”

The woman blushed. “I meant that fighting and riding had taken care of it years ago, and if it hadn’t my fingers would have.”

It was a thing of false bravado, her chin tilted high and her face a bright red, but Jaime found himself imagining it–those long, broad fingers of hers between her legs, pumping relentlessly as she gasped and writhed, her other hand cupping her near-nonexistent breasts. He imagined she’d grunt as she did while fighting, feral and without regard for politeness.

His heart belonged to another, but his cock seemed to have no trouble with the idea of bedding the Maid of Tarth.

“Still,” he said, draining his goblet of wine, “it is best to be thorough.”

***

Cersei hated his new wife, her green eyes narrowing whenever the two crossed paths. And while he loved his dear sister and had no more than a begrudging respect for the poor woman so unfortunately wed to him, Jaime found he had little patience for her cruelty.

“Leave the poor beast be,” Jaime would softly reprimand when they were alone. “I am yours as I have always been. I do not goad Robert so.”

“Robert is the King, foolish brother,” Cersei would softly reply, nibbling at his ear. “Your wife is nothing.”

***

“Your father says I am not to spar until I have produced an heir,” she told him three moons into their marriage, clearly furious. “So I shall never wield a sword again.”

“I didn’t take you to be the type to listen to such proclamations.”

“_I_ am not,” she said. “But every halfway decent swordsman in the keep is, it seems. No-one will fight with me.”

“I will,” he said. “If he quarrels, we’ll tell him it gets our juices flowing. He’s desperate enough for an heir he won’t forbid it.”

He saw her weighing her distrust of him against her need to fight, and come to the same conclusion any warrior would.

In the silver moonlight, her brow damp with sweat as she raises her sword once more, he thinks she is almost beautiful.

***

They had been married nearly a year when she came to him, wearing a nightgown he knew was not her usual sleepwear.

“An heir is required of us,” she said. Still blushing furiously, still brave despite it, as she had been the night they wed. “It can be yours or I can seek… You said you will not bed an unwilling woman and have stayed true to this, and I will offer you the same courtesy.“

“Come here, Brienne,” he said. Kissed her. Touched her.

“I know…I know this is duty,” she said, near-trembling in his arms. “There’s no need to play at enjoyment.”

He growled. Stubborn wife. “I have every intention that we will both enjoy this.”

_Jaime_, she cried when he finally found his place between her legs. _Jaime, Jaime, Jaime._

***

“I hear congratulations are in order, dear brother,” Cersei said, trailing her hand across his shoulders. “You finally braved the beast and got her with child.”

He thought of Brienne, of the tiniest swell of her stomach that he’d mapped with fingers and lips only that morning. Thought of the way she’d laughed, scolding him for his nonsense. Thought of the way she still sought his bed more nights than not, for affection or simply to sleep, though she had already done her duty. His heart belonged to Cersei, of course it did; it had for so long there was no longer a choice, even as she grew crueler by the day. But more and more of his life was with his stubborn sword-wench. His wife.

“So the maester says,” Jaime said. Neutrally, lest his sister read more into it than there is. “But I’ve gotten you that way three times.”

“With any luck she’ll bear you a healthy boy and die in the process,” Cersei shrugged, lowering herself onto Jaime’s lap and moving to kiss him.

He pushed her away.

“That is my _wife_,” he said, standing. Strode towards the door. “I’ll thank you not to speak of such things again.”

“Jaime, I only meant–”

Whatever she said after that was said to an empty room.

***

“He’s kicking,” Brienne said in wonder, a hand pressed to her stomach. “Come, Jaime, feel him.”

Jaime crossed the room and bent before her chair, placing his hand where directed. There was a soft thump against his palm and he smiled. That was his child, the one he could hold and teach and love openly, the one that would bear his name. A son who loved swords as his parents did, or a daughter with her mother’s eyes. Almost certain to be stubborn, and tall. And whoever they were, they were right there, beneath his hand, a gift he’d never imagined.

“Thank you,” he whispered in a choked voice, rising to press a kiss to her forehead.

***

He should have known Cersei would retaliate, but he hadn’t. And time had gone and he’d allowed himself to become complacent, taken Cersei’s cold silence as unimportant. But the moment a harried messenger had sought him out, telling him Lady Lannister had been attacked by three men and been taken to their chambers, he _knew_. He knew Cersei had arranged it, and knew she expected him to go to her so they could quarrel and fuck and he would forgive her once again. He knew and he did not care; his only thought was to head to their chambers to see Brienne.

The maester was leaving as Jaime arrived.

“My wife?” he asked.

“The babe is well, Ser Jaime.”

Jaime had to suppress the urge to grab the man by his robes and shove him against the wall.

“I did not ask after the babe,” he growled, “I asked after my wife.”

“A broken nose–not her first–and some bruises. I have given her something to keep her calm, but she will heal,” said the maester. “She informed me that she would have fought better if she had her own sword, instead of needing to take it from one of the men.”

That did sound like Brienne; Jaime swore to himself that she would not go unarmed again. Thanking the maester distractedly, Jaime pushed past him to enter the chambers. The curtains were drawn to make it dark, but there was enough light to see Brienne in the bed. She looked paler than usual, and whoever had cleaned her injuries had missed a smear of blood near her hairline. Jaime moved to sit on the edge of the bed, taking her hands in one of his, and brushing her hair from her forehead with the other.

“I will kill her,” he said, quietly but not quietly enough.

Whatever the maester had given her had made Brienne sleepy, because she looked at him with confusion. “Kill who?”

“The one who ordered this,” he said, not willing to burden her with the details.

“Your sister.”

She said it with such certainty that Jaime wondered what cruelties Cersei had inflicted when he was not around to witness them.

“My sister,” he confirmed. She had clearly forgotten that even tame lions had teeth and claws, and for the first time in years he was feeling far from tame. He would rend her limb from limb for this, would not rest until he’d tasted blood.

“Can you stay?” Brienne asked quietly, sleep inching up on her. “The maester says I will sleep for hours, and I don’t want to be alone. Without defense. I know…”

Jaime removed his boots and sword, then slipped beneath the sheets and drew his wife close as he dare. His sister would face his wrath, but it could wait.

***

Within a sennight, Jaime had taken his wife from King’s Landing. He offered to take her to Tarth, to see the island she spoke of so fondly and the waters said to rival even the blue of her eyes, but she declined.

“Not with these bruises still apparent,” she said. “My husband might have been deterred from killing a queen in retaliation, but I’m not certain my father would be. Take me to Casterly Rock; we can visit Tarth once the babe has arrived.”

The maester insisted she ride in a wheelhouse, given her condition and recent injuries, and so Jaime rode with her. The motion of the vehicle lulled her to sleep, her head resting on Jaime’s lap. Her stomach had swelled in the past days, as if the child was determined to make their survival apparent in the face of adversity. He watched her in slumber, her once-ugly features so fondly familiar to him now, and wondered when, precisely, his heart had been entrusted into her gentle care.

He kissed the crown of her head and rested his hand on the sword he’d gifted her days before, the golden lion on its pommel declaring her a Lannister.

***

The servants of Casterly Rock love her more quickly than Jaime had, but with the same fierce devotion. Brienne seemed overwhelmed by it all, especially when Maryn, who had run the whole of the castle since Jaime had been a boy, looked between the two of them and smiled.

“I never knew it was a love match,” she said happily. “Anybody who wins over our Jaime…”

“That’s very kind,” Brienne said, blushing furiously, and Jaime thought bitterly of the love he’d once wasted on his sister. “But no, not a love match.”

“Ahh,” Maryn said, nodding wisely. “When it grows in the aftermath, it is all the stronger.”

“Thank you, Maryn,” Jaime said, placing a hand on the small of his wife’s back and escorting her away.

That night in their chambers, he helps her undress.

“I do, you know,” he says, trailing his knuckles against her neck and watching the way she sips in breath when he does. “Love you, I mean.”

She does not reply, but her kisses tell him all he needs to know.

***

The babe arrived shortly after sunrise, a squalling, healthy girl that Jaime immediately declared had her mother’s eyes.

“All babes have eyes like that, Ser Jaime,” said the midwife patiently. “They’ll likely change before she’s a year.”

“I hope not,” Jaime replied, stroking the babe’s soft cheek and then looking to Brienne. She looked remarkably well for a woman who’d endured hours of pain; her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, a huge smile on her face as she looked between him and the babe. “And to think, wench, if you hadn’t been so determined to show off your skill with a sword, we would hardly be here.”

She rolled her eyes, her smile turning fond. “I trained at night so as to _avoid_ showing off my skills, Jaime. If you had not been so determined to gawk at the freakish woman, or left one of the first seven times I asked you to, your father never would have found us that night. You have nothing to blame but your own stubbornness.”

“I’m grateful for my stubbornness, then,” he said, leaning over to kiss his wife softly once, twice. “Truly, truly grateful.”


	2. "Is that my shirt?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> teaandbanjo asked: Number 44, "Is that my shirt?" is obviously Jaime and Brienne. Your choice of canon or AU!

Brienne doesn’t _mean _to say it, but she’s curled up on Jaime’s sofa watching Interchangeable Cop Drama: Supernatural Edition (she’s pretty sure that’s not what it’s _actually _called, but she’s only watching it because Jaime likes it and regularly sits through her preferred genre of Interchangeable Science-Fiction: The Feminist Agenda) and _it _happens. Again. So she snorts.

“What?” asks Jaime, from where he’s lounging on the opposite end of the couch. “Those two have been dancing around each other for ages.”

She gestures to the telly, where a very petite brunette is dancing around her love interest’s kitchen wearing panties and his button-down shirt from the night before. White, the shirt is always white, so the panties are more visible and because none of these men have ever worn anything else.

“He’ll come in in a moment, say ‘_Is that my shirt?_’ in the tone of voice that makes it clear he thinks it looks better on her than it does on him but would look best on the bedroom floor, and then they’ll fuck again. Then they’ll get called into work, because apparently there is a limitless budget or the city has never heard of OT pay, and she’ll have to wear said shirt. Probably with a cute little belt, because it would be comical otherwise, and everyone will know they have finally consummated their undying-until-February-sweeps love.”

“You’re a cynic, you know that?” he asks, affectionately tossing a throw cushion at her.

“It’s the TV universe take on marking your territory,” she replies, tossing it back. “The Strong Female Character can, of course, be claimed by the man she loves. It’s an offense to my feminist principles,” she says, because it is, but also because it sounds less pathetic than admitting that it might be _nice_. 

It’s not even like Jaime is that much smaller than she is, and the aesthetic doesn’t require the shirt to be completely buttoned. But her boyfriend, love of her life, bane of her existence, insists on wearing shirts so closely tailored to his physique that she’d look like the godsdamned Hulk if she tried, presuming she could get them over her shoulders in the first place. She’s never going to be dancing in Jaime’s kitchen in a shirt that smells of his cologne with legs for days, and that’s fine. Mostly. She still reserves the right to be annoyed by its prevalence on television.

*

She’s completely forgotten the conversation when she arrives at his place three days later, and so is deeply confused when he opens the door wearing a shirt that’s about four sizes too large and makes him look like a pirate. He smirks at her questioning eyebrow and then kisses her in a blatant attempt to redirect her attention.

Appallingly, it works. And it gets him out of the ridiculous shirt, so she can’t even regret it. 

It’s only the next morning, when she’s stumbling out of bed at seven and thanking _fuck _it’s a weekend and therefore she doesn’t have anywhere to be, when she realises the robe she keeps here is missing and Jaime is watching her with an expression that is nearly… her eyes flick to the pirate shirt and _oh_. So she wasn’t quite so convincing as she thought. 

“Why, Brienne,” he exclaims when she pulls it on–and yes, there are legs for days (and yes, said legs are a fair bit more muscular than pretty supernatural cop lady’s, but neither one of them is complaining), and yes, he’d actually sprayed the collar with his cologne, and yes, the entire thing is exactly as ridiculous as she imagined but it’s also exactly as _nice_–and he looks her over hungrily, “is that my shirt?” 

The damn thing looks really good on the bedroom floor.


	3. “Yell, scream, cry, please, just say something, anything.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: 64. “Yell, scream, cry, please, just say something, anything.” for Braime please!

They are a few days from King’s Landing, the two of them sat before one small fire while their escort is around another–she distrusts them, and Jaime finds that he does as well, and even if this alliance sparks rumours it is better than the risk of being apart–when the usually quiet woman asks him whether he’d truly pushed Bran Stark from that tower.

“I did,” he says, uncertain as to why he does, beyond the fact that she knows the truth about Aerys and perhaps she deserves to know the truth about this as well, even if she will hate him for it.

She says nothing at first, the silence interrupted only by the crackle of the fire, the quiet sounds from the other fire, and he is filled with an impulsive, foolish urge for her to say _something_, to yell at him or draw her sword or spit at him, but do not leave him with her silence.

“Why?” she finally asks.

_Remarkable woman_, he cannot help but think. _King’s Landing will eat her alive. _But he tells her; perhaps he has wanted to tell someone.

“Did you know Robert?” he begins, and when she shakes her head, continues, “He was not a kind man to those who crossed him or betrayed him. Bran Stark–” the name sticks in his throat just a little, but the boy deserves the acknowledgement at least, “he saw Cersei and me that day.”

It takes her a moment to realise _what _he had seen them doing, and even in firelight he can see her blush. She is a woman of contradictions, Brienne. 

“The children are yours?”

“I’m not sure if matters, if he had reason to believe it,” he replies, Cersei’s voice telling him, even here, that he must not ever give voice to the truth. “He’d have killed my sister and the children without hesitation, and myself as well unless my father caught wind of it and bartered for my life. He could spin the deaths to his advantage soon enough, but it is harder to replace a full-grown heir.”

“Even one who has sworn to the Kingsguard?”

Jaime gives a bitter laugh. “Why would my vows get in the way of his desires?”

She nods, places more wood on the fire. 

“Do you regret it?”

It is his turn to be silent, and he hates himself for it. He should be _certain_, and he is, family must come first, he must protect those he loves… but perhaps regret is not completely impossible even so, however he wishes to quash it.

“Tommen, the youngest, he’s the same age as Bran Stark,” he says instead of answering, as if this small offering can in some way explain everything, as if the detail is not so fragile it might shatter in an instant. “He loves cats.”

But Brienne, for all his accusations of awkward lumbering, is gentle as she nods.

“My brother had a cat,” she says. “Terrible mouser, but he loved her dearly. She wailed for weeks when he died.”

It is the first time she has mentioned family except to confirm her father’s name. 

“How old was he?”

“Ten,” she says. The same age as Tommen, the same age as Bran. Near enough, at least. “I would have fought the gods themselves to save him, if I could.”

_But you’d never have pushed an innocent boy_, Jaime thinks, and wishes, briefly and all too aware that it matters not now, perhaps it had never mattered, that he could say the same for himself. 


	4. “Go back to sleep.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> luthienebonyx asked: Drabbles. 46, Brienne, Jaime. ("Go Back to sleep.")

The rain on Tarth fell in a mist, rarely rising above a soft patter, and the blue-grey light of early morning filled the bedchamber. Brienne lingered in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, breathing the cool sea-salted air, listening to the sound of gulls over water, and sighed as she felt soft lips and rough stubble against her neck.

“Go back to sleep,” she murmured, even as his hand teased her breast, as her legs shifted apart to welcome him. 

“Sleep?” he whispered back, every word breathed onto her skin. “With a glorious wench in my bed? I think not.”


	5. Before the beginning -- in the wild blue yonder (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aviss asked: Before the beginning, please :)
> 
> This was part of an ask meme with prompts based around existing works. This is a snippet set before the events of _in the wild blue yonder, your star is fixed (in my sky)_, when Arya speaks with Jaime before his trial.

“It isn’t right.”

Jaime startles, sitting up quickly and glancing around the darkened cell. There is a shadow on the other side of the bars, and when it moves he realises it is Arya Stark. He wonders if she has come to kill him, a merciful death before he must face dragon fire. But no, if that was her intention he would already be dead. He might have been glad for it. He lies back down, rolling over to face the stone wall.

"The Queen is dead,” she says. 

“I’m aware.”

"Daenerys.”

"Oh.”

Perhaps it will be the chopping block after all, which at least sounds more pleasant than the dragon.

“It was Jon.”

He knows the girl is close with her brother-that-is-her-cousin, and he is surprised by the sorrow he feels for them both.

“He won’t have an easy time of it,” he says.

“Even if it was the right thing to do?”

It’s a challenge, but there is just a tiny sliver of youthful bravado beneath it, begging him to say otherwise.

“Especially if it was the right thing to do.”

There is silence for several long minutes, and just when he thinks the girl must have left, he hears a sigh.

“The trial is tomorrow.”

Time means very little here, has meant very little since he rode from Winterfell; there is duty and then there is death, and he’s enough of a coward to dream of the woman he left behind but he’s never dreamt there is any ending but this. But here at the final moments, he finds there is a final spark of defiance of his fate.

“When you see Brienne, tell her…”_ I love her. She is the truest knight I have known, and her memory has given me the strength to face this with courage. That I am sorry I could not stay. _“Tell her I died well, and thought of her. At least one of them will be true.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of your death,” Arya says. “A letter has arrived from Winterfell to speak on your behalf.”

It will make no difference, He just hopes it did not pain her too much to write.


	6. a time when children are a possibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Humble prompt request! Off the back of the sad!sex in Yonder, and their avoiding the chance of pregnancy, perhaps a time when children are a possibility...? Not necessarily smutty, but could be! Or just a conversation about it.
> 
> This is the first of three prompts that can be read as one story--I was going around and around about whether to post them separately, and if I do continue prompts in this AU I still might, but for now I'll just post them in succession. Can be read as a potential sequel to _in the wild blue yonder_, but it's not explicitly so. 

Brienne is still looking at the letter when Jaime arrives back at their apartments, shedding his armour with practiced efficiency before crossing the room; she leans back when he is behind her, smiling softly as he presses a kiss to her forehead. 

“How is my ser wife this evening?” he asks, as he always does; it is indulgent and sweet and she thinks perhaps she should resent it, prickle at all the implications people could read into it if they witnessed it. But they have fought too hard to get here, lost too much to feel anything but happiness; she closes her eyes and hums, feels a small smile at the corners of her mouth. It is there more often than not, these days.

“A letter from my father,” she says. “He says if my lion does not get me with child in the next six moons, I should throw him over in favour of a wolf. He feels I ought to have my pick of them.”

Jaime laughs, rounds her shoulder to lean against the desk and looks at her with a cocked head and a positively feline expression on his face.

“It is good to know my good-father is so confident the problem lies with me, and not our careful avoidance.”

She grimaces. “Yes, well, I’m hardly going to write him of _that_, now am I? He’s feeling his years, I think, and worried about Tarth once he is gone.”

“Ah.”

“It’s not–” Brienne huffs and pushes the paper away, slipping her hand onto Jaime’s thigh. “He’s right, of course. And perhaps he ought to have rewed himself, years ago, but as it is I am the only heir. If I die without a child of my own, it will go to a distant cousin. One who is in no way fit to rule the isle.”

Jaime reaches out to brush a strand of hair from her face. She ought to cut it again, or commit to growing it longer though that’s unwise if she is required to fight, but she does neither. 

“And yet, the moon tea,” he says, and there is such a tender carefulness in it that she drops her gaze to focus on the laces of his shirt.

“I was never meant to be the heir, as you know. I’m barely suited to it–” she feels him go to argue, though she is still studying his laces. “Don’t assure me that I will do it well, because I know it. My position here assures me of that, if nothing else. But I’m not inclined to politics, or making those decisions. Spending hours in my father’s solar discussing taxes seems akin to torture. To accept my duty, then pass it onto someone who has no more choice in the matter than I did…”

Her fingers stroke Jaime’s thigh, the fabric of his trousers and the coil of muscle beneath steadying her. It is her duty, she knows it, but to set everything else aside… 

“Do you want a child?”

The words startle her, and she looks up once more. He is watching her with the softness he saves for moments that are just between them. 

“It is hardly as if I have a choice,” she says. 

Jaime shrugs. “We have been making that choice. It’s imperfect, though there are ways around that as well, but… It’s an unpleasant business, dangerous. Better to name Pod your heir and ignore the mutters of bloodlines if it is not what you wish. Do you _want _a child?”

There is a queer flutter in her chest as she contemplates the question. Pod and Sansa and Arya and dear, brave Lyanna Mormont. The little ones that toddle around Winterfell these days, the ones barely off apron strings who find their way to the practice yards and swords nearly as large as they are. Memories of her own mother, faint but precious. Catelyn Stark’s fierce love for her children, ready to do anything to save the ones she could. It is a world that was cut off for her years ago, replaced by a septa’s assurance her husband would do his duty in the dark and her children would never truly be hers, cared for by others and raised for duty. 

“Do you?” she asks, not yet certain how to reply; she only remembers too late that he _had _children, had lost them in horrible ways and never been able to claim them even before then.

“It is a risk,” he says. “Every time. The bearing of them, but also… who they are, what they become. A risk to love someone so delicate.”

“Would you undo it?”

He is quiet for a moment and she thinks she should not have asked, but then he shakes his head. “No. I might wish for different circumstances, but… Did I ever tell you that Myrcella knew? Just before she–before she–” his lips twist. “She said that she was glad it was me.”

Brienne stands, moves between her husband’s legs and strokes his cheek. His hand reaches up to grip her wrist, his thumb gliding over her skin. 

“Another child would not change that, for better or worse,” he says. “I would not have you choose this for pity.”

“It’s not–I _do_,” she blurts out. “Perhaps more than I realised. And perhaps I am not suited to it any better than I am to be Evenstar, not by nature–”

“Nonsense. You’ve dragged me into a halfway decent man.”

“Jaime, you know–”

“Brienne, I am teasing you,” he says; his arms have fallen to her hips and he tugs her close enough he must look up at her. “But I can think of no-one better. You love so deeply, and you are patient and kind and brave. If you want this, your lion is only too happy to prove his virility to your father.”

Brienne begins to laugh. “You’re a ridiculous man, and I’d appreciate my father never be part of your _virility_. But… I want this, I do, but I don’t know how…” She gestures behind her, where there is a stack of training reports. “It is a year, at least, where I cannot do my duties. How do I set that aside, Jaime? There is always so much to be done, and no guarantee how long I have.”

He doesn’t dismiss her concerns, strokes her back as he thinks. 

“Then it is simply a matter of strategy,” he says. “There will be much you can still do, if you are well. It might be worth speaking to the maester. You have trained good men, you can give them more responsibilities. And there _will _be things you cannot do, of course there will be, and I’m sorry for that. It needn’t be today, regardless.”

Brienne feels his hand slip beneath the hem of her shirt, fingers skirting up her spine in a familiar rhythm. His lips find her neck, pressing a series of a soft kisses against it, stoking a fire that is rarely far away. 

“Not today?” she asks, a little breathlessly. 

He grins, lion and wolf and man. “No,” he says. “But it would hardly do to let our training slack.”


	7. “Promise me you’ll come back.”

To call the whole thing a rebellion would be far too generous for what is, in essence, half-a-hundred men with pointy sticks yelling loudly that they have no inclination to follow a young woman, Stark or not. Some of it is that Sansa’s policies are necessary but not popular, but it is more that there have been several years of peace and men always forget the horror of war too quickly. Under any other circumstance, Brienne would ride out with her best men and quash it before unrest was allowed to settle.

Unfortunately, the circumstances will not allow for any such thing. She is seven moons pregnant, closer to eight. Her armour no longer fits. She’s winded far too easily during training, nevermind a real fight. Her presence would be a distraction, her men too likely to protect her instead of following commands. And so she paces her chambers as Jaime dresses in his best blue and silver armour, muttering curses while her husband valiantly tries not to laugh. He doesn’t find it _amusing_, as such–he’d been sombre as they’d made the plans the night before, held her with telling tenderness when they’d finally sought their bed in the small hours–but she must make a ridiculous sight. Everything about this is ridiculous. 

“You may as well say it,” she snaps. “I knew there would be things I could not do.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Of course you were. I certainly am. I don’t _like _this.”

“It may not come to fighting,” he offers. 

His fingers are fumbling at a buckle, and Brienne turns on her heel and marches towards him, pushing his hand away to secure it herself. The familiar act makes tears spring to her eyes; he is riding into danger and she will not be there, will wait at home utterly _useless_. 

“Promise me you’ll come back.” 

The words slip out before she has time to stop them, feels the way that Jaime freezes. No man riding into battle can promise it, but she needs him to say it anyway; perhaps it is that he has never lied to her when it matters, and this matters, more than anything in her life, this _matters_. Perhaps it is that he will only break his word if there is no other choice and she needs the assurance that if he fails to return, it was not by anything but the greatest duty. 

His hand grips the nape of her neck, his stump rests on her rounded stomach. 

“I promise I will come back,” he says with utter solemnity, then leans upwards to seal it with a kiss. Slow, sweet. Certain. 

When he pulls away, Brienne exhales shakily and gives him a smile. “Keep Pod with you,” she directs. “I’d tell you to surround yourself with a dozen of the best fighters, in the hopes they will guard your back half so well as I would, but…”

“It would be poor strategy,” Jaime finishes. “But I will keep Pod.”

“And if there are bears, or dragons, or–”

“Brienne, there are no bears. Or dragons. Or wights. There are some very ridiculous men throwing what amounts to a tantrum, easily dealt with. I will be home in a few days.”

*

He is not back in a few days. From the messages that return to Winterfell he tries to negotiate peace, then he attempts threats as a deterrent, and eventually it comes to battle; the last message is in a different hand, reporting that there were a handful of fatalities, and Brienne tries not to read too far into it. Jaime does not write his own letters unless he must, his relearnt skill with a sword not translating to a neat hand, and there are any number of reasons he would have someone other than Pod write the missive. It is a sennight before the men return, and Brienne finds herself waiting on the walls of Winterfell as soon as their arrival is heralded. Banners in the distance, drawing closer at an unbearably slow speed. Some part of her wants to tear herself away, saddle her mount and ride out to meet them, however awkward that may be, however cumbersome and slow she _would _be, but now they are in sight she is studying the tiny figures for a familiar flash of blue and cannot bear to look away long enough to do it. 

The babe seems to feel her agitation, because they begin to kick in earnest; she rests her hand against her stomach as if she can calm them with the action. She glances around to ensure she is alone, and absently rubs the lump she is fairly certain is a foot.

“He’ll be home,” she says quietly. “Your father is a man of his word, especially to those he loves. We must wait.”

The words are not a balm, do not make the waiting more bearable. They do not make him magically appear amongst the slowly approaching group. The outriders are close enough now that she can see they are still battered from the fight, that they must have pushed incredibly hard to reach home so quickly, and she’s filled with a sudden dread. She still cannot find Jaime amongst the men. 

Her descent from the ramparts is slow, her hand on the rail to keep her steady as she moves as quickly as her state allows. The women of Winterfell are so eager to tell her that pregnancy suits her, that she bears it well, but all she can feel are the ways her body has changed, all the little ways it betrays her. As absurd as it sounds, she has only now truly begun to grasp what it was like for Jaime to lose his hand, to be stripped of defense and identity; but she knows hers is temporary, and she’s selfishly glad for it. 

When she reaches the ground, she glances towards the stables and dismisses it–to saddle and mount would take too long, and she can barely ride above a walk these days. She strides for the gates instead, and she may be slower but at least she is not reducing to a waddling shuffle she has seen in other women, and exits just as the first outriders arrive.

“Ser!” they call, and one dismounts and makes towards her.

She waves him away. “Horses, then clean yourselves,” she directs, though her eyes are already looking past him. She thinks she should ask what has become of Jaime, but regardless of what words are said she will not believe her husband returned until she sees his face, hears his voice. 

More men are coming, most on horseback, and any advantage given to her by her height is lost. Some faces are more familiar than others, but she knows them all and smiles at each and none refuse to meet her eyes, and surely they would… 

The thought is gone when she spots Jaime in the midst of the group, Podrick at his side; he is calm and in command, giving orders for the dead and wounded, the keeping of the supplies. She knows the moment he spots her, because he smiles and finishes what he is saying, then manoeuvres his horse towards her.

“Ser Brienne,” he says, inclining his head in greeting. 

It is all very proper, very lady commander and her most trusted man, one of the clear delineations she is so insistent on in moments like these; it is also entirely unwelcome.

“Surely you can greet your wife more warmly than that, Jaime,” she scolds, trying to appear stern even as a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. He is _home_, and that is enough for all the rest to hang. “The poor woman could barely see her feet this morn.”

The polite smile turns into a broad grin, as it inevitably does when she speaks fondly of her condition, and he swings from his horse with a litheness she’d be lucky to invoke when _not _carting around a near-grown babe. She’d likely fall on her face if she tried it now. But then he moves up to kiss her, the lingering taste of battle on his lips, and she smiles.

“You will need to make a full report of your journey,” she says when she pulls away, “though Lady Sansa says it can wait until this evening, unless there is something pressing?”

Jaimes shakes his head. 

“I’ll have a bath drawn in our chambers then,” she says, leaning down slightly to kiss his cheek and murmur against his ear, “A just reward for your return.”


	8. “When I’m with you, I’m home.”

When he comes into their quarters at Winterfell, Brienne is standing before the fire, head bowed, wearing naught but a thin night shift. 

“You weren’t at dinner,” he says. “A tray will be sent up later.”

“Thank you. I had intended to join you, but…” She grimaces, a hand pressing against her back. 

“Are you–”

“Merely discomfort,” she says. “Nothing more yet. There’s no need to call the midwife.”

He cannot help but be sceptical, and she rolls her eyes fondly.

“They will fuss over me, confine me to bed. What I need for now is company, Jaime, and yours is better than most. You are at least exasperating in predictable ways.”

He laughs and crosses the room to join his wife, encouraging her to take a seat beside him. He’d never imagined himself here, marriage and fatherhood barely remembered dreams, and now he awaits the arrival of a lion in wolves’ territory. The pains come and go, marked at first with a slight tightening of her features or an unfinished sentence, and they wait. They talk about unimportant things in between, eat from the delivered tray, or sit in comfortable silence. 

“There is a birthing room in Evenfall Hall,” she says, during one of the lulls. “With an enormous glass ceiling, so that the future Evenstar is born beneath the night sky.”

She sounds wistful, to be so far away from her home in this moment, and he presses a kiss against her hair.

“And what of ones born during the day?”

“They wouldn’t dare,” she laughs, her mouth twisting as she shifts into a more comfortable position. “But the stars are always there.”

The hours pass and the pains grow more frequent, until she can’t bear to sit through them, shuffling around the room and swaying in his arms. He’s seen her in battle, roaring from the ramparts, and the stoic silences and near-silent moans are unexpected. But she seems in good spirits and insists that it is nowhere near the time yet, until a particularly bad one has her almost doubled in his arms. 

“If we leave it much longer, I will worry of leaving you alone,” he says, and she grits her teeth and nods, moving to lean over a table.

By the time he is back, and it is only minutes, she is groaning through every pain, rocking her hips, sweat beading along her hairline, the thin shift she’d been wearing discarded. She barely seems to register their arrival.

“Brienne,” he says as he draws nearer, once, twice without response, and so his mind supplies the only familiar alternative. “Brienne, to me,” he commands, as if this is a battlefield, and is relieved to see her eyes blink and focus on him. “We have to move you.”

“No bed,” she says adamantly. “This is the only way it’s bearable.”

He glances at the midwife, who looks displeased but isn’t actively saying no, so he nods.

“Alright,” he says. “But I’m staying. Great aurochs like you swoons and the poor midwife will be crushed.”

Said midwife looks appalled, but Brienne laughs before the next pain hits and she grabs onto him. And then it all goes so unbearably quickly and slowly at the same time; he watches her face contort with pain as she focuses her attention on the battle raging in her body, whispers words of encouragement in the brief moments between pains, offers to help her to the bed at the insistence of an increasingly irate midwife and backs her up when she says no. The groans turn to grunts and swallowed screams and the midwife is coaxing her to_ bear down, there’s a good girl_, even though neither one of them seems to be paying her any attention, and then there’s a sudden shout and then silence, broken by the reedy squall of a newborn.

“A boy,” says the midwife. “Now will you please go lie down.”

They share an incredulous look and a laugh and there’s a _baby_, a _son_, and neither of them actually manage to see him until Jaime’s helped her to the bed, but then he’s there, tiny and red and rooting at his mother’s breast, his head so small that Jaime can cup it perfectly with his hand. He’s pretty sure they are both crying, though neither one of them says so, and eventually Brienne gives a small and pained exhale.

“Take him,” commands the midwife, swaddling the boy and handing him to Jaime in one smooth motion. “Now bugger off. She’s not bleeding heavily, but there’s still the after to deal with.”

Brienne rolls her eyes again and he kisses her, then carries the boy to the small window, where the last stars of night are still shining in the sky. He stands so the child can see them, though Jaime doubts he would know the difference. 

“Future Evenstar,” he murmurs, studying the boy’s scrunched features. A mighty burden for someone so small, but he will grow. They will do their best to make him a good man and a good leader, and that will have to be enough. 

The stars have been replaced by the first streaks of dawn when the midwife eventually declares herself done, and Jaime turns back to the bed to see a now-clothed Brienne watching him with the softest expression.

“No glass ceiling,” he explains, bouncing the sleeping boy softly, “but I thought I’d show him.”

She extends a hand and he sits beside her, handing the boy over. For someone so uncertain she was suited to motherhood, it sits on her well; she is beatific as she strokes the boy’s cheek, nuzzles his downy hair.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t be home,” he says. “I know you’ve missed it of late.”

She shakes her head, presses her lips to the babe in her arms, looks up at him with her eyes glowing in pure happiness.

“I’m home,” she says. “So long as I have you, I’m home.” 


	9. Before the beginning -- in the wild blue yonder (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aviss asked:  
For the Ask meme, BEFORE THE BEGINNING for Yonder , please :)

When they are both nine, Adalys goes to Storm’s End with her family for half a year, leaving Brienne behind. Letters exchanged do very little against the snide comments of the boys still at Evenfall Hall, remarks about her height and her lack of graces and the way she fights, and Brienne places stone by stone between herself and them, imagining that in this, at least, she is a maiden under guard. When Adalys returns, a betrothal secured but years from coming to fruition, her dearest friend hops over the knee-high battlements, and for awhile Brienne forgets that they are there.

When she is twelve, Ronnet Connington casts a rose at her feet, declaring it the only gift he would bestow upon her. She stands tall as she can, the coppery tang of blood in her mouth from her bitten tongue, and reminds herself that she is a warrior, remains silent even as tears coat her cheeks. She places another stone. 

When she is fifteen, there is a ball. Her father means it to lift her spirits, now that Adalys is wed and gone, and hopes she will find a husband of her own. And for hours she allows herself to believe it--she dresses in a gown that is, she is assured, the fashion in King’s Landing; she pinches her cheeks so her pale skin is given a flush of youthful vigour; she admires how the elegant braid in her hair can be beautiful and yet so practical that if she had  _ need _ to wield a sword, it would be no hindrance. She believes, and the boys fighting for her attention make her believe all the more. When the truth comes out, she wishes to flee; Renly and his kindness convince her to stay, to hold her ground. But that night the wall rises so high she cannot see over it. 

Years go by, and little by little the small wall grows. A third failed betrothal, a stone. Renly, a stone. The cruelty of men who should see her as their equal in battle, a stone. Catelyn, stone. Stone, stone, stone, until Brienne is standing upon the ramparts of a fortress.


	10. in the wild blue yonder -- Podrick POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> slipsthrufingers asked:  
POV - Podrick please 😉
> 
> For the [no excuses writing ask meme](https://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/188732669362/no-excuses-writing-meme-askbox-version), a scene from chapter seven of _in the wild blue yonder_

Podrick knows Ser Jaime’s reputation. The Golden Lion, with sharp teeth and claws. Hot-headed and dangerous, fiercely and terrifyingly loyal. A man who would kill a king to give his family power, a man with no honour or scruples. And yet that is not the man he has known--Lord Tyrion always spoke of his brother with great love and affection; Ser Jaime saved him and sent him with his Lady Ser, for which Pod is eternally grateful; he remembers Riverrun and Winterfell and the moment Lady Brienne became Ser, the battle, the moments after. Podrick knows it all, and he struggles to reconcile the man he knows and admires with the reputation that still follows him.

Watching him now, lounging against a table, legs stretched before him and an expression of insolence on his face as he leans forward to speak with Fenton Waters, Podrick _sees_ it. The rumours did not do it justice. 

“Do you know what we do with a woman who doesn’t come to our beds willingly?” Ser Jaime asks. It is a friendly question, or would be if Podrick did not know the man’s truly friendly voice, had not heard it a hundred times. This is false joviality, razor sharp. “It is easy enough to force them—frighten them into compliance, or corner them. Take what you desire.” The worst part is the way Fenton ever so subtly nods, the way this is a conversation Pod has heard in all sincerity. Ser Jaime continues, a little chillier now, “But you are in the home of Lady Stark, under the command of Ser Brienne of Tarth, Lady Commander of the Northern Stewardsguard. Two of the fiercest warriors in Westeros, in their respective ways. When a woman does not wish to come to our bed,” he leans forward here, his hand on his sword in clear threat, “_we leave them fucking be_.”

His low voice fills the entire room; Fenton Waters flinches, and Pod himself has to shake off the crawling sensation in his spine. This is the man who’d strike first and question later, entirely unfamiliar to Podrick but wearing Ser Jaime’s face. 

“And what are a couple of northern bitches going to do about it?” Fenton asks, and there is something deeply unnerving in Ser Jaime’s smile in reply. 

“Oh, I imagine they will make inquiries, bring you to trial. They are not cruel,” he says, then pauses before cheerily adding, “I, however, would just as happily gut you and sort it out later. If you so much as think about bothering another woman in Winterfell, you had better hope that they find out before I do.”

“And why should I be frightened, Kingslayer?” taunts Fenton. “You’re hardly the golden lion of Lannister now. Course, an ugly bitch like the commander must be grateful for any cock she can get. Unless she gives you hers?”

It is only Ser Brienne’s voice in the back of Pod’s mind, reminding him to wait, not react, he has a duty, that keeps Pod in his own seat. As much as he would like to strike the man, he will resist. It does not stop him from hoping that Ser Jaime will. 

“We’re done here,” Ser Jaime says instead, calm as anything. “You can stay on duty until midday, then resume your normal duties.”

He spares Pod only the smallest of glances before heading towards the door, but it is enough for Pod to know--he has been tasked with staying close to the lecherous suspected spy, and he must do his duty whatever Fenton might say. Ser Jaime is almost to the door when Fenton speaks again.

“It’s clear she earned her knighthood on her knees,” he sneers, and Pod watches in fascination as Ser Jaime tenses, turns, strides, as Fenton obliviously continues, “Did she earn her command the same way? Licking Sansa Stark’s pretty little cunt, because she sure as shit hasn’t earned it—”

Podrick knows Ser Jaime’s reputation, but when he backhands Fenton Waters so hard it makes a cracking sound as the man goes sprawling, it is the first time he truly believes it. 


	11. The Lord and the Selkie- Tyrion POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> luthienebonyx asked: Writing meme - something from the selkie fic, but from the POV of Tyrion.
> 
> For the [no excuses writing ask meme](https://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/188732669362/no-excuses-writing-meme-askbox-version)

Tyrion knew his brother had a propensity for finding the sick, the wounded, the weak. It was one of the few traits shared with their father, but where Tywin would use this to better catch his prey, Jaime saw it as a reason to defend them. Jaime could be sharp-tongued and cutting, quick to act, lethal with his blade in hand, but he took little pleasure in cruelty. 

The selkie is still a surprise.

Oh, later, Tyrion would claim that he knew _something _was strange about his brother’s evening walks to the shore, his renewed involvement in his lordly duties, but the truth was he was too absorbed in his studies and his avoidance of their dear, clearly mad sister to notice any such thing without the benefit of hindsight. But even if he had known of the something, the exact nature of it still would have surprised him. 

Selkies were children’s tales. Selkies were from far away. Selkies were beautiful and doe-eyed, not towering women who blushed at a simple greeting. But when Lady Brienne looked at him, eyes the exact colour of a changeable ocean, he _knew_. He was the learned one, after all. 

“Come,” he laughed at her careful manners, “you must call me Tyrion if you are to be my good-sister.”

“And you may call me Brienne,” said the selkie, “though I have no intention of being your good-sister.”

“Is that not a selkie’s cloak, Brienne? And my brother’s sword in your hand?”

“That does not mean we will wed.”

The gaze she fixed upon him was unyielding, and Tyrion wondered whether his brother has any notion that this creature was not so defenseless as his usual choice. Though it is Jaime’s sword in her hand, so he must have some idea. Tyrion laughed again, utterly delighted at such a development, and Jaime gave him a warning look.

“Brother…”

“Oh no, of course, my noble brother would never dream of such a thing,” he said, meaning it. His brother would neither bed nor wed the unwilling; it was simply a question of whether the lady was willing. “Tell me, Brienne, do you know how to wield the sword you hold so well?”

“She searches for her brother and time is short,” Jaime said, his patience growing thin. “As strange as it might seem, some people would miss their absent siblings rather than rejoice.”

Strange indeed. Still, as they discussed her absent brother and the strange questions of their sister moons before, Tyrion observed his brother and the selkie; how they spoke, how they moved, how they watched each other with carefully guarded eyes. And when Jaime pledged to help her retrieve her brother from the vindictive creature their sister had become, Tyrion could not help but smile to himself. 

Whoever held her cloak, he would have a good-sister by the next moon. 


	12. “and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.” (Crush, Richard Siken)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.” (Crush, Richard Siken) Requested by @heavyheadedgal, @it-may-be-dull-but-in-determined, and @ice-connoisseur

Jaime knows what people see. When they look at him. When they look at her. Sharp edges and brute strength, celebrated in one and reviled in the other but the essence so very much the same.  
(There is a moment, after the loss of his hand but before the very worst of it begins, where she--she, who he saw as nothing more than muscle and violence--is cleaning vomit from his hair with the gentlest touch and he asks why. He expects another brusque adominition, a command to live or take revenge or whatever it was that had driven food into his mouth, but she gives him the smallest of smiles and her face softens; the expression does not sit easily on her features, but it makes her eyes shine. Whatever reply she intends to make is lost when he is sick again, but he never quite forgets.)

He gives her armour, a sword, a quest. A horse to ride and half a squire. He prepares her as best he can for the cruelties of the world and hopes it is enough; enough to fulfill his oaths and hold on to the last shreds of his honour, enough to keep her safe.  
(She looks back. He watches her go.)

Death and destruction. Time and time again. It seeps into every corner of his life, tainting even the places he’d once kept clean.  
(_Take Riverrun without bloodshed_, she requests, and oh it sounds like a dream. And it takes harsh threats, but it feels like a victory as he waves his farewell.)

There is a Dragonpit and words and an angry hand on his arm. There is his sister. Words and truths and her great bloody beast ready to kill him, every one a blow. There is a ride north, a confrontation of his past. Blow, blow, blow, until he thinks it is a miracle that he might live long enough to die.  
(There is a moment, when he knights her, where she gives him the smallest of smiles and her face softens, and then she beams; the expression does not sit easily on her features, such happiness foreign to her as much as him, but it makes her eyes shine.)

His throat is hoarse from shouts, his muscles scream in agony, his eyes water as sweat falls into them. It is a battle that cannot be won but must be fought, and he breathes once and rejoins the fight. If he must die, at least it is how he knows how to live; sword in hand and a purpose in the arm that swings it.  
(She is as exhausted as he is when it ends, chest heaving as she leans against the wall that was meant to be the place of their last stand. There is still soot and dirt and blood on her face as she turns to those still living, those under her command, but there is only softness as she checks them each for injury.)

When he kisses her, it is… violence and gentleness all at once, somehow. The bruising press of mouths and the soft stroke of his thumb against her neck, the blunt digging of her fingertips and the breathy whimpers as he moves inside. She is above him, and it is the same small smile, the same gentle hand on his face.  
“Why?” he asks her, as he did all those years before, his words gasping and his head tilted back.  
She leans down, kisses his neck. “There must be something of the world worth protecting, or what is the point?” she says, as if it is obvious. Perhaps to her it is. “What good is honour or duty without reason? And what better reason than tenderness?”

(He thinks, perhaps, he understands this act of defiance. His touch is gentle as he pulls her close.)


	13. “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” (_The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_, T. S. Eliot) for the [Poetry Prompts](https://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/188903018282/poetry-prompts)

**“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”   
\--**_The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_, T. S. Eliot

* * *

Mother is dead. Mother is dead and Jaime stands on the cliffs nearly Casterly Rock and looks for merlings. Perhaps they will take him. Perhaps they can bring her back if he goes on a quest. Perhaps they can take baby Tyrion, keep him safe. He’s seen his father’s eyes, the cruel sneer on Cersei’s lips; it is more than he can do alone.

He sings. He pleads. He wields a stick as if it were a sword, determined to prove himself worthy.

He waits all afternoon, until servants are dispatched to bring him to dinner, but no merlings come.

*

The waters of Tarth are known for the depth of their blueness, but today they are grey. The dead are grey, Brienne remembers--Galladon and mother and the girls, Old Jeyne the cook. She wonders whether Bryce was grey, laid out in the Sept.

She imagines merlings in the sea, breaking above the waves and sweeping her away from here. To adventure. To glory. Away from the life Septa Roelle has described.

“We’ll find a new betrothal,” says her father, as he approaches. Sits, hand on her shoulder, smile sad.

“Of course, father,” she says dutifully. There are no merlings here.

*

There is a quiet spot just outside of King’s Landing, perfect for merlings. She faces the sea, breathes the salty air and feels the wind against her cheeks. Jaime stands behind, his arms resting over her stomach, just beginning to bloom. They search together, his breath warm against her ear.

“Ser!”

It is Podrick, breathless and red-faced, no doubt with some new crisis to face. It matters little--they are gone, Jaime and babe both; one to the destruction of King’s Landing, the other lost on the ride South.

Neither was hers to lose, but she mourns them all the same.

*

“Merlings, mama!”

A small hand tugs her onto the sand, eyes intent on a shape in the bright blue surf. It is driftwood, she knows, but she lifts Alek onto her shoulders and tells him to wave.

“You’ll spoil him,” laughs her husband, still coming down the verdant path, the baby in a sling against his chest.

“Did you never search for merlings?” she asks, lowering the boy once more. He runs towards the water as they watch.

“Often,” her husband replies, hand on her waist pulling her close. Kisses her cheek. “I did not find them in the sea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to leave this at three drabbles of grief and mermaids, but I can't quite do it. Read the fourth drabble how you will--a dream or the afterlife, Jaime surviving after all, Brienne finding a second love and happy ending.


	14. “In you I waver, fall and rise up burning. You among all beings have the right to see me weak.”  (The Hurt, Pablo Neruda)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aviss asked:  
Oh Neruda!!! Number 4 for Braime, please :)
> 
> “In you I waver, fall and rise up burning. You among all beings have the right to see me weak.” (The Hurt, Pablo Neruda)
> 
> Okay, I blended this with a prompt I’ve had for ages, which I can’t find the initial ask for and also completely subverted,  
“I didn’t want you to see this.” And also leaned into a few other lines from[ the poem](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_DQoCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA332&lpg=PA332&dq=%E2%80%9CIn+you+I+waver,+fall+and+rise+up+burning.+You+among+all+beings+have+the+right+to+see+me+weak.%E2%80%9D++\(The+Hurt,+Pablo+Neruda\)&source=bl&ots=MGxueXLt3F&sig=ACfU3U2i9a6PNInTWNW7KPU44EMchja4ng&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie7bWvnt7lAhXSN8AKHWKkDjQQ6AEwAHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CIn%20you%20I%20waver%2C%20fall%20and%20rise%20up%20burning.%20You%20among%20all%20beings%20have%20the%20right%20to%20see%20me%20weak.%E2%80%9D%20%20\(The%20Hurt%2C%20Pablo%20Neruda\)&f=false).

**“In you I waver, fall and rise up burning. You among all beings have the right to see me weak.” **

_The Hurt_, Pablo Neruda

* * *

The dreams do not surprise him--not on the first night, when he is too exhausted to do more than collapse for a few hours on a straw pallet, nor on the second when drink and exertion send him into a deep slumber, but… later. As plans are made to head south, and for him to stay, and the happiness and the strange domesticity he’s found in Brienne’s life begins to take shape. That’s when they come, for both of them.

It’s always orange in the dreams, and dark. He smells the decay from the dead, feels the cold biting at him, the aching burn in his muscles, hears the screaming. He wakes, heart pounding as he scrambles for a sword kept on the other side of the room for just this reason, and then Brienne wakes, or if the dream is hers it is Jaime who wakes second, but regardless they fuck, there is no other word for the visceral, clawing desperation with which they cling to each other in the darkest moments of the night, seeking proof they are alive in the border between pleasure and pain.

There is tenderness too, as the fingers that had dug into his back so hard it bruised swipe the tears from his cheeks, as the mouth that had bit at her shoulder murmurs soft words of comfort. As he confesses all the faces he sees in his sleep, his children and those he’s failed to save and those he killed unjustly, as she tells him it is always Renly in that first wave and how she strikes him down herself, then Catelyn comes while she is still keening. There is tenderness, but always with the sharpened edge of a blade turned outward to protect them both.

It is only here, with the door barred shut and the fire burning low, with this singular person, that they can expose themselves so. They must be knights elsewhere, commanding and in control, but here with their bodies entwined they are grounded by teeth and hands and burying his cock so deep inside her that they both forget to breathe. The freedom to be weak makes them strong, a mutual feasting on muscle and sinew and bone, and he worries that one day they will demand too much and leave behind only empty shells. But then she reaches for him again and he feels the heft and hew of her, the weight of her body and the strength of her heart, and knows no single man could consume her so completely and he would kill any who tried. She is his and he is hers; two flesh, two hearts, two souls, one hunger. Until the end of his days, however soon they come.


	15. Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things I want to ask you. (Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken) (Brienne/Addam Marriage of Convenience AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiraziwrites asked:  
Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things I want to ask you. Or: Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you. Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
> 
> This fic requires some context–I was reminded that while the last episodes were airing I was half-certain they were going to end up making Brienne pregnant and Jaime dead in canon, and I just… I had this thought of her getting to King’s Landing and realising. And she’s, obviously, freaked out because bastard child of the man she couldn’t save from his shadows, but there’s love there too and it’s _complicated_. And then she meets Addam, one of the few people who knew the Jaime she did, and he offers to marry her and raise the child–it’s not a bad marriage from his perspective, he can look out for his friend’s child and the woman he loved enough to almost escape, and they actually rather like each other. And this marriage of respect and a quiet sort of love that springs from mutual grief blossoms. They don’t _love_ each other romantically, but it is a good marriage, one that protects both her heart and her reputation. And of course my brain decided that, after remembering this for the first time in 6 months, I needed to write it. Pure self-indulgence. So this is a snippet of that universe. Which I might revisit if people are interested. Canon-compliant angst ahead and all that.

**Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things I want to ask you. **

_Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_, Richard Siken

* * *

Brienne watched the small boy toddling around the Godswood, stick in hand. The clouds overhead dulled the golden curls to an ashier blonde, one of the few traits he’d picked up from her. He has his father’s eyes, his father’s temper. Sometimes it hurt, but more often it made her angry--she worked so _hard _to see Lucan as his own creature, to love him on his own merits, and more often than not she succeeded, had since the day the maester had laid him on her breast. But on days like today… days like today, it was impossible not to see the spectre of Jaime.

“He would have stayed if he’d known,” came a voice from behind her.

“I know that,” she snapped. “It only makes it worse. If I’d known sooner, or been more, been _enough…_”

“You know it wasn’t that,” said the voice. From the corner of her eye, Brienne saw the familiar figure round the bench and sit beside her. “Jaime was always complicated. Tyrion said--”

“You can tell Tyrion that the ban about discussing Jaime extends to intermediaries,” Brienne said harshly. “As much as I blame myself for not stopping him, Tyrion is the reason he’s dead. I won’t keep his family from him, but I won’t forgive that. Not ever.”

It was a familiar argument. They said nothing for a long moment rather than continue it, sitting side by side as they watched the boy play. He’d found a spot of mud from the rains the night before, and was happily digging into it.

“When will you tell him? That his father--”

“The man who is raising him is his father,” Brienne snapped, turning for the first time to look at her husband. “He’s only a child, what he needs is to know he is loved. Jaime had his chance.”

“No, he didn’t,” Addam said softly. “That’s why it still hurts. We always said we wouldn’t hide the truth from him, Brienne.”

Angry tears blurred her vision, and she blinked them away rapidly. She’d shed too many tears already. “We agreed before…” she sighed, wincing slightly as her son slipped in the mud but quickly righted himself. “Before I knew all the things he’d miss. When I thought I could forgive him for missing them. But then--” she gestured to the boy, “he’s so sweet, and quick, and--I wish Jaime knew, but if I saw him again… I’d want to shake him, and scream, and tell him to stay away from us for all the harm he’s caused.” She hated the quiver of her chin, pressed forward. “How can I tell Lucan that, ser? How do I take that hate and love and transform it into something a child can understand, when I do not understand myself?”

An arm came around her shoulder, and she leaned into the familiar embrace. She had been doubtful when Jaime’s childhood friend had offered her his name, for the sake of the child, but she had no reason to regret it in the years since. He knew, more than anyone else still alive, who it was she mourned.

“I miss him too,” Addam said. “Lucan deserves to know him, before he hears the rest.”

And Brienne knew he was right, had told herself the same thing so many times, but it was too close today, too raw. “Tomorrow,” she said. “I will take him to see the White Book tomorrow.”

Addam’s arm squeezed her gently and released, and she hurriedly wiped the stray tear from her cheek. Then Lucan turned, the curve of his smile so achingly familiar that it stole Brienne’s breath, and dropped the stick to run towards the bench.

“Papa! Papa!” he cried, hugging Addam and smearing his white cloak with mud. “Come, papa, come see.”

Brienne smiled as she watched the boy tug his papa towards the mud, all eager enthusiasm. He was so like Jaime, a spectre that was never entirely gone, but as much as it hurt, there was joy in it too. A gift she had not foreseen, but would not trade for anything.


	16. "First time they spar together?" (Brienne/Addam Marriage of Convenience AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same universe as chapter 15, where Brienne is pregnant with Jaime's child and eventually marries Addam Marbrand. For the prompt: "First time they spar together?" Canonical character death warnings apply and all that.

Move, move, parry, shift, move, _Brienne, I_, **strike**. Back foot, pivot, _when did you last have your moonblood_, **strike**. _After the war, we’ll_\--**strike, strike, strike**. Her eyes burnt in exhaustion and unwept tears as she thrashed the training dummy without thought, all elegance gone as she pushed it all away, narrowed her world to her body and her sword, unable to completely forget that neither was entirely her own any longer. 

“I’m sure it’s quite dead by now,” drawled an amused voice, some hint of the Westerlands scratching at her already raw heart. She spun around, spotting a red-haired man leaning on the wall at the edge of the training yard. Handsome, she thought, unable to muster any feeling for the observation. She has known handsomer, has learnt to not be quite so habitually defensive in the face of beauty. “You’re Lady Brienne, are you not?”

“_Ser_ Brienne,” she spat.

The man smiled disarmingly and bowed. “But of course, _Ser_. I can’t say news of my cousin’s knighting you was much of a surprise. He spoke very highly of your skills.”

_Jaime_. She can’t-- She can’t _crave_ him like this, the mere mention of him setting longing off deep in her gut.

“You have me at a disadvantage, I’m afraid,” she said. “You know who I am, but I can’t recall your name.”

The man pushed off the wall, moving towards her; Brienne had bedded a lion, surrounded herself with wolves. He was neither. A hawk, perhaps, intent on prey, but as he stopped before her he gave a smile that was… distinctly human.

“Ser Addam Marbrand,” he said. “We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting, though I’ve heard much of you.”

The rangy man before her bore little resemblance to the mischievous child of Jaime’s tales, save for a glint in his pale blue eyes, but she was inclined to trust him all the same. Or not _distrust_ him, at least, which in King’s Landing was unusual enough. 

“What do you want?” 

If Tyrion had sent him, she’d send the little bastard down the nearest flight of stairs. He’d had the audacity to apologise to Brienne when she’d arrived south, when all he’d had to do was do _nothing_. 

Ser Addam laughed, a surprisingly mirthful sound. She would not have thought him the type. “A spar against the commander of the Kingsguard, perhaps? I’ve been terribly unchallenged of late.”

“Perhaps you ought to have fought the dead at Winterfell then, Ser Addam. I assure you there was no lack of challenge there.”

It was an insult , but also a question. 

“Ahh, yes,” he said. “Jaime left King’s Landing in all haste, I did not know he was gone or why for over a fortnight. He was always impulsive, but I never understood why he went north.”

“He gave his word,” Brienne said, replacing Oathkeeper in her scabbard and grabbing two tourney swords from a nearby rack. She tossed one to Addam, who caught it easily. “On three.”

They fought, slowly at first as they evaluated the other’s skills; he was graceful and quick, and had clearly learnt the basics from the same swordsman as Jaime had. It was--it was not so similar as to be fighting a ghost, but for a moment he felt closer than he had since the night she last saw him. The last time she would ever see him. Her attention wavered, just long enough for Addam to disarm her. 

He dropped his own sword instantly. “Are you well?”

Brienne shook her head. “Well done, Ser Addam. Perhaps we will do this again, but not now. I have--”

“He rang the bells.”

It was a blurted confession, one that made her already roiling stomach contract and her mouth water.

“Pardon?”

“Jaime. He rang the bells for surrender. Given… given what resulted, it has been decided this will not be recorded, but… I believed you of all people had the right to know.”

“Why should I have the right?” Brienne asked; her limbs were oddly numb as she contemplated the new information, wanted to rage and cry that for a second time he had tried to save the city and none would know.

“You will bear his child, will you not?”

Her knees wobbled at that; she thrust the tourney sword into the dirt and leaned against it.

“Secrets travel fast in King’s Landing,” she said, as levelly as she could. “I only confirmed it this morning.”

Addam shrugged. “You kept touching your stomach, even as we were fighting. I have sisters, it’s a tell I know well. I came to speak with you, to try and understand what had made him break free--”

“Promises,” Brienne repeated.

“Love,” Addam countered. “I came for answers, but when I suspected you were... “ he nodded towards her stomach; realising her hand was laid across it, she dropped her touch away. “I thought you ought to know the truth. Very few people knew the Jaime I did, but by all accounts you were one of them. That is all we have now.” He gave an ironic smile. “Well, that and the babe, for you. Jaime would have been--”

“I know. We talked of it. After the war was done.” The memories come too fast to push away, and her voice cracked as she admitted, “I thought he would be alive to see it.”

“I am sorry, truly, for your loss, ser,” Addam said. “May I escort you to your quarters?”

She wanted to tell him no, uncertain whether she could mask her pain that far, but just as much she wanted to tell him yes, to cling to whatever scraps of insight he could give, to be hoarded jealously against the slow erosion of time. She would forget, she knew, piece by piece until the Jaime in her mind was nothing more than a poor reproduction. She nodded, a tiny movement of her head that took all of her willpower. 

Addam took the tourney swords and offered her his arm as if she were a lady to be escorted, and when she looked at it in disdain he gave a rolling shrug of his shoulders.

“Even a commander is allowed weaknesses, when nobody is looking.”

She smiled and did not take his arm, but the gesture was well meant. They walked towards her rooms, saying very little aside from small stories of Jaime. She can’t face the rest, not yet, but the tale of the stolen pie makes her laugh, and Addam nods seriously when she explains how first they met. 

“Do you think he was happy, to be with her in the end?” 

They are turning the final corner to her quarters. She hadn’t meant to ask, was not entirely certain she wanted to know the answer. But Addam, perhaps, understood it at least, and the words burst from her lips when she least expected them. Addam considered for a moment, and she wondered if he would lie and how--a “He only loved you” was clearly untrue, but she knew that he had not left out of _desire_ to. 

“No,” Addam finally said, quiet and contemplative. “They were many things, over the years, but I don’t think happy was ever one of them.”

He had been happy in Winterfell. Happy with her. She had hoped for that for him, at least, in the days she had waited for news of his death. They reached her door, and Brienne stopped and turned to face Addam.

“Thank you,” she said. “For your honesty.”

Addam nodded. “If you need… if you need someone who knew him, good and bad, to talk to, or-- A shared grief is easier to bear than a solitary one. My door is always open to you, Ser Brienne. Jaime said, once, that I would like you a great deal.”

Brienne laughed despite the weight in her chest. “That does not particularly sound like Jaime.”

Addam shrugged in admission. “I believe his words were more along the line of ‘Addam, the woman is stubborn as all seven hells and a pain in my ass, but you ought to see her with a sword.’ I drew my own conclusions.”

They shared a small smile of understanding at that, and Addam bowed low.

“Keep well, commander. Until our next meeting.”

Brienne inclined her head. “And you, ser,” she said, hesitating only a moment before adding, “Until our next meeting.”


	17. Names

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, funny story. I'm trying to do an end of year/early 2020 clearout of prompts, or at least acknowledge that I'm super slow at filling them. So I mentally wrote this ficlet while walking the dog this morning, and realised only after it was half-done that I had completely misremembered what prompt I was given. Oops? So consider this a bonus, and we'll pretend this is helping in the clearout. 😂😂

Years at Court has taught Jaime that a word, a name, can be used as effectively as any steel. And so he calls his captor _ugly _and _wench_ and _Lady Brienne_, insults and familiarity prickling at her equally well, and she calls him _Kingslayer_ with such bland disinterest in one moment and seething anger in another. It is nothing to the joy of a sword in his hand, but it is the only weapon he has and he wields it with adeptness borne of necessity. 

He is only a little surprised that she does as well, in her own staid way. 

*

He doesn’t know when he begins to crave his name from her lips; even before _sapphires_, perhaps, when he is telling her to go away, not to fight, it will only make it worse. When she refuses and he realises that she is so far from any other woman he’s known, and yet unlike any man. Or perhaps it is afterwards, when pain and fever rack his body and all he wants is a little kindness, to not die amongst people who know him only as kingslayer and oathbreaker and Tywin Lannister’s son. He hates her, still, hates her righteousness and her stubbornness and the way he cannot shake that she is everything he had once been, but when he finds her in the baths of Harrenhal, when he tells her of Aerys and collapses in the aftermath, he says the only words that come to mind.

_Jaime, my name is Jaime_.

He is not even certain he said them aloud until he goes to her in her little prison and she holds her head high and calls him _Ser Jaime_, and believes him when he says he will keep his oaths.

He wonders, idly, if anybody has used his name with such certainty before. He will not forget it. 

*

_Ser Jaime_ is her weapon now, turned outward against those who would think poorly of him, and turned against himself when he fails to be the man she believes him to be. There are times he longs for a _Kingslayer_, but she is as mule-headed in this as she is in everything; there are times he longs for simply _Jaime_, the last formal distance between them stripped away. But those times she looks at him and uses it with that same certainty as she had the first, he realises he would trade it for nothing in this world. 

* 

She doesn’t even notice, the first time she calls him Jaime. They are preparing for the battle, an informal gathering of those who will fight on their flank and wield some sort of authority to discuss strategy. Her long fingers are tapping against the map that shows the defenses of Winterfell, her brow is furrowed. They’re fucked, he knows they are, but they’re a lot less fucked than they’d be with anyone else. 

“If we must retreat, I’ll need you here, Jaime,” she says, placing a figure inside the castle’s defenses. It’s not remarkable, it’s the same way she’s spoken to Podrick, to the northmen she is trusting, but his chest clenches, bracing for a hit that does not come.

“Where will you be?” Pod asks.

Brienne looks up, catches Jaime’s eye. They have no need to speak--he knows where she’ll be and why, and she’s not wrong.

“I’ll bring up the rear.”

One of the northerners looks about as happy with the plan as Jaime is, but without the understanding. “Can’t Lannister--”

“No,” Brienne says. “I’m the best swordsman, and my blade is Valyrian steel. If we have to retreat, I’m the best chance of all our men getting inside.”

What she doesn’t say is that if they have to retreat they’ll need every bit of Jaime’s command experience, even more than they’ll need _her_, if there is to be any hope of survivors. It is a calculated choice, made before the heat of battle; he’s not sure he’ll be able to abide it, when the time comes, but he won’t quarrel now. The conversation continues, and the ease of her _Jaime_ echoes in his ears long after it is done.

Perhaps this is why he came north to die. There are worse reasons. 

*

In their chambers, in this stolen moon of bliss where the larger world cannot intrude, she calls him Jaime in so many ways. A laughing reprimand when a too-eager kiss bumps their heads together. Languid in the morning, in the few moments before they both rouse for duty. A desperate gasp when she wakes from a dream and seeks him out, a firm command when he does the same. Moaned and groaned and screamed as she fucks him, or he fucks her. Whispered as she kisses her way down his body, hummed as she takes him in her mouth. Pleading, sweet desperate _pleading _that still feels like an order as he takes her to the very edge of pleasure, as she pulls his hair and fucks herself against his tongue. _Jaime, Jaime, Jaime_, years worth of his name freely given, and better than any dream. 

When it is time for him to go, when she stands in that courtyard and begs for him to save himself, she calls him nothing at all. 

*

She calls him many things now--her Master-at-Arms, her most trusted advisor, consort to the Evenstar, hero of the long night. She calls him sweetling to goad him and nuisance when he encourages her to set duty aside for an hour to spend time with her family. Husband, father to their children. She calls him arrogant bastard when they quarrel, and sometimes when they don’t. But laced through it all, morning and night and stolen moments in between, she always calls him Jaime. 


	18. “I told you not to fall in love with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wildlingoftarth prompted: “I told you not to fall in love with me.” Jaime x Brienne - I'm imagining him saying it to her jokingly over and over because of course she hates him in the beginning...until she doesn't???
> 
> This is... not really that. And also several months late.

Jaime Lannister is sitting at her desk when she walks through the door, obscenely expensive leather shoes propped on its surface as he leans back in her chair. Seven hells.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

The smirk he gives her is probably illegal in at least three kingdoms, and Brienne briefly wonders whether she could punch it off him. Not that she would _ever_ punch a colleague in his smug, beautiful, arrogant face. It would be unprofessional, and unlike _some_ people...

“I _told_ you not to fall in love with me, Tarth,” he replies, shrugging with a nonchalance she is convinced must be at least a little pretense. _Nobody_ is that indifferent. “Now we’ve been ordered to _collaborate_.” His nose wrinkles at that, echoing her own sentiments.

“No. I’ll talk to Cat, there’s no way--”

He shrugs again, dropping his feet so he can lean forward and tap one of his absurdly elegant fingers against a file.

“It’s a good case. Make or break a career sort of case. It’s not like there’s anyone in this godsforsaken hellhole that’s going to be any better to work with,” he says, meeting her eyes and daring her to throw away this opportunity. “Presuming you can keep your hands to yourself.”

“Not a problem,” Brienne seethes, tossing her bag onto the coat stand and stalking over to the desk. “_Really_ not a problem.”

*

He’s tracing shapes against her stomach, laughing every time the muscles jump beneath his fingertips.

“_Jaaaime_,” she protests. “I’’m trying to sleep. How are you not exhausted?”

It is, she realises quickly, precisely the wrong thing to say, because he’s actually managing to look _more_ smug than usual.

“Oh, I _exhausted_ you?”

“Every damn day,” she says, throwing an arm over her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at him. He’s _naked _and gorgeous and so fucking annoying. “You try working with the most insufferable man in the North.”

“Ahh, working with me. And no other reason?” His lips have joined his fingers, and her exhaustion is quickly falling aside.

“It’s 3:30 in the morning.”

“Fair.” He’s kissing her hip now, so soft that it tickles and she squirms.

“Damn you,” she groans, lacing her fingers through his hair and tugging him up to her lips. “I have work in the morning.”

“This is your own fault,” he chuckles. “I _told_ you not to fall in love with me.”

“Oh,” she says archly, “is that what this is?”

*

She stares at the papers, definitive proof of his complicity, afraid that if she looks up at him she will have to face the fact that the man she thought she knew, the life she thought she was building, is a lie.

“It was over before we met,” he says. “It’s why I came north, took the job with the Starks. They are my family, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“This could destroy everything, Jaime. The firm, Cat’s election campaign, my professional reputation.”

_Us,_ she doesn’t say. Can’t say.

“I’m sorry.” It’s a ragged apology, heart-felt. She wishes it made a difference.

“Why now?”

He exhales, sharply; she knows if she looks up he will be running his hand over his face, forehead to chin; it’s a gesture as familiar to her as her own, and she can’t bear to see it.

“I’m not a good man, Brienne,” he says, and she _hears_ it, possibly for the first time--_I told you not to fall in love with me_. But she had. “It’s coming out. I won’t hide from it, and maybe this will…” He sighs again. “I made choices a long time ago. You can’t save me from myself.”

*

She’s in the courtroom through it all--as he gives all the evidence, as he explains how his father made sure his golden heir was technically innocent even though he should have known better, as his father and sister are found guilty. Meets him outside afterwards, sees the way his eyes widen.

“Brienne. What are you...”

She moves closer, until they are only a hair’s breadth apart.

“You told me not to fall in love with you,” she says, reaching out to cradle his face between her hands. “I left the firm. Come to Tarth. With me.”

“But your job--”

“Was a way to do what is right. It’s not the only way. What you did in there… Jaime, how could I not love you?”

*

There are mountains on Tarth, luscious and green and wild. The spring air is warm but not cloying, perfect for a long hike; she turns back to look at Jaime, a few steps behind and a faint sheen of sweat on his skin making him near _glow_ in the sunlight. It is, quite frankly, rude.

“Are we almost there?” he asks.

Brienne glances up the path, makes a guess. “Another half hour, 45 minutes.”

“The view had better be worth it,” he groans playfully, and Brienne laughs.

“Honestly, Jaime,” she says in mock-exasperation, “you should have known better than to fall in love with me.”


	19. Sad Wanking -- in the wild blue yonder (missing scene)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Anon prompted: There seems to be a dearth of sad wanking in the Braime fics I’ve found so far. Having read your Phrack stories already.... is there any chance you plan to rectify this situation in the near future? 🤞_
> 
> Why, hello anon! It’s almost as if you were recently subjected to my embittered musings on this topic and felt obliged to prompt this so I’d shut the fuck up. I’d say I’m sorry, but we both know that’s bullshit. 1100 words of sad wanking, just for me you. It’s edging towards an E rating, which is rare enough for me that it’s worth mentioning. (Alas, there is no edging.) And god I hope the formatting works. For reference, this is a missing scene from _in the wild blue yonder_, during Adalys’s visit. (And before the point where he makes a sarcastic comment in his head about Brienne riding a dragon and wielding Brightroar and then immediately going ‘Welp, I know what I’m wanking to tonight, should probs feel guilty but…’ because apparently I have a need to throw in a lot of masturbation references?)
> 
> For those not reading the fic but are still intrigued by the words ‘sad wanking’, all you need to know is that Jaime lives, he and Brienne end up in a political advantageous marriage but are still estranged, a childhood friend of Brienne’s has arrived in Winterfell and they must convince her that the marriage is real and all fake relationship fics require the Kiss of Necessity, wanking ensues.

He tries to keep her out of _this_, which is easy enough in the first few weeks of their marriage; on days he wakes half-hard or needs release to sleep, his hand seeks his cock and a few moments later evidence of their supposed marital relations are left upon his sheets. It is a strange habit, but after years of court intrigues he knows all too well how servants gossip; more than a few alliances have crumbled in the face of what was or was not seen by sharp-eyed observers, and he will not give ground for this to be seen as anything but a true marriage for both their sakes. But he will not bring Brienne, even the Brienne of dreams and memories, into it; she does not want this, and as much as he has fucked up the rest, he can honour that at least. And it works, until they begin to share an evening drink and Lady Adalys arrives from the south, and the careful divisions between what they are and what they purport to be are blurred.

It is dreams at first, nothing more than vague impressions of heat and slickness that leave him wanting when he wakes, easily enough dismissed, easily enough dealt with by a firm grip and very little thought, something driven by pure physical need. And then come the memories, coiling around him, sinking into his skin—the first night, their bodies still bruised from battle, the last night, a reverence in every motion that he’d dared not identify until it was done, the nights in between. He can push them away though, with enough effort, return them to the secret corner of his heart where he keeps it all. (He is not particularly _good_ at keeping it there, he will admit—he does not love by halves, even when that love is unwelcomed. Especially when it is unwelcome, perhaps, because he knows so little else. But he places it there nonetheless.)

And then she kisses him.

Not a kiss of desire, or anger, or really any true emotion, but it is a kiss all the same. A brush of lips, an inexorable tug and sway towards her when she pulls away. A second kiss, deeper than the first, and yet still just a performance for the woman who must believe they are truly married, with all that entails. (The stroke of Brienne’s cheek though, the way he can’t quite bring himself to say _I love you_ but cannot hide it, _that_ is real.) She kisses him, and he leaves to attend his duties, and in the still-cold night air in which he keeps his watch he is plagued by thoughts of what might have been, in another life, with other choices, other duties. When he returns to bed that night, in the wee hours of the morning, their quarters silent, he thinks of it still, and does not permit himself release.

It is days later that he feels the urge, waking almost achingly hard with echoes of a dream still lodged in his chest. He skims his hand down his torso (_she’s over him, touching him_—no), unknots the loose trousers he has worn to bed, feels coarse hair against his palm as he reaches inside, grips his shaft. (_She’d held him loosely, until he’d urged her otherwise, her calloused hands_—_**no**_) He pumps once, twice, it’s familiar, but he can’t stop picturing (_‘Jaime,’ she sighs, her thighs bracketing his hips as she leans down_) he pictures a woman, blonde—not blonde, auburn hair, long, her body lithe. (_She is so strong, mesmerising to watch, her muscles moving beneath her skin as she strokes him, gentleness and power._) Imagines dainty arms, musical laughter, an amalgamation of all the simpering ladies of court and the camp followers he has seen, tries to hold onto it though it stirs no feeling in him. (_‘Fuck,’ she moans, when he is atop her, when he is sheathed so deeply inside, when her fingers tug at his hair and her hips cant to meet him. ‘Fuck, Jaime, I’m not going to break.’_)

Imagines it is a whorehouse, simple, transactional, a physical need met. (_Sometimes she touches him simply to touch him, afterwards. A brush of fingers against his elbow, her long leg hooked around his. No expectations, no motive behind it but a desire to do so._) No, no. Whorehouse, scattered with luscious cushions, willing women. (_They are to spar when he rises, grunts and sweat and dirt, the salt-tinged crash of lips, the pounding of his blood, fighting and fucking forever intertwined, and he can’t, he shouldn’t, his hand speeds up even as he tells himself no, no, he won’t think of how her skin flushes, won’t think of her scars in firelight, won’t think of the playful battle of wills when they kiss, hard and unforgiving. He won’t—_fuck, no, he _**won’t.**_)

He is short of breath, arching into his own touch, his neck taut, his jaw tense, so close he can feel it just out of reach, tries to imagine the auburn-haired woman who would take his cock in her mouth (_Brienne had, she’d taken his cock and she’d laughed as she’d done it, and it had been… everything, truly, joyful and desirable and generous, and when she was done he’d had just enough strength to urge her up, up, to hold onto the bed as he’d buried his face in her cunt, her thighs around his ears blocking everything from his world but the taste and smell and sight of her_.) Tries to imagine her voice, something liquid and melodious, feels his pleasure slipping further away from him as he chases this nebulous imagining, the sugar-sweet use of his name. (_Brienne’s is deeper, richer, he’s not thinking of this but he’s close again, her voice slow and thick as honey, even in bed, even when she peaks, “Jaime, Jaime, Jaime—_)

“Ser Jaime!”

She’s knocking at the door, her voice even more potent in action, and before he can stop, before he can even _think_, he’s coming, more a punch in the gut than any expression of pleasure, a breathless grunt as he spends against his stomach, as the scent of sex hits him, as the shame comes moments after.

“Ser Jaime!” she calls again. “We should have been down in the yards already...”

He drops his head against his pillow, breathes heavily through his nose, realises his hand is still moving, just enough to ease him through, closes his eyes in resignation.

“Just a moment,” he calls out, thankful his voice doesn’t shake.

He’s tried to keep her out of this, he does. But he is well and truly fucked.


	20. 20th Wedding Anniversary (in the wild blue yonder)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aviss asked: Prompt: 20th wedding anniversary :)
> 
> Did I use this opportunity to write _in the wild blue yonder_ schmoop? Yep. And then I realised that the whole point of the ending I cooked up seven months ago is to leave the details of their future choices open, so it got weird. #noregrets Written for the [No Excuses Writing Meme](https://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/190421587567/no-excuses-writing-meme-askbox-version)

The straw mattress is thin and prickly, the sheets roughly spun, the first frost of the new winter coats the window, and there is nowhere in the world Jaime would prefer to be than in this little inn no more than an hour’s ride from Winterfell with his wife asleep beside him. She keeps her hair longer than she once did, and if he looks closely he knows that some of the strands are white instead of pale blonde; beneath the furs he knows there are a thousand little signs of a life lived, scars and silvery-pale stretch marks and softness to what was once only muscle. But she is still Brienne, still stubborn and honourable and _good_, still wicked and loving and happy. 

“Do you think they will believe we have been waylaid?” she asks without opening her eyes, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 

“Gods, I hope not. They might send a search party.”

She gives a hum of agreement. “Perhaps we could bribe the innkeep to say we were never here. He might not have even recognised us.” 

“A one-handed man and an enormous woman in breeches?” Jaime asks with a nonchalant shrug he knows she will feel, even if she does not see. “We could be anyone. That last evening’s entertainment included no less than three stories of the battle against the Night King was pure coincidence.”

One eye peeks open, and he laughs at the irritation it conveys; the stunning blue has not changed at all, but there is always love there now, even in the moments it is mingled with anger or sadness or amusement. 

“You never know, Jaime. It could be the turn of the weather that brought it to mind. I quite fancy the anonymity, just for today. No duties, no meetings, no minor familial crisis.” Her hand reaches out to slip beneath his sleeping tunic, her head tilting back to offer her lips. “Simply you and me and the draftiest bed in the North…”

He grins as he kisses her, like he has almost every morning for nearly twenty years, marvels that despite the odds they are here. “I might have sent a message to Sansa, when the rest of the retinue went ahead,” he admits. “Told her not to expect us until tomorrow.”

“My clever husband,” she laughs, deep and throaty, and pulls him in for another kiss.


	21. Before the beginning -- in the wild blue yonder (3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> luthienebonyx asked: Before the beginning!
> 
> For the no excuses writing meme

Brienne knows the distance between Winterfell and King’s Landing, how far a horse can safely be ridden each day, how to account for things like a sudden snowstorm; she does not need the raven’s message in Lady Sansa’s hand to know that Jaime would have arrived in the capital days ago. 

She stands straight, studies the tapestry hanging on the far wall so she does not need to see the sympathetic faces when its contents are revealed. They’ll be kind, she knows, Podrick and Sansa and the few trusted advisors that Sansa has collected, or neutral at the very least. Nobody will _rejoice_ that he is dead. (He may not be dead, she knows; he might have saved his sister and brought her to safety, or brought her to face justice. She hopes, for his sake, that he has succeeded, though it was a near-hopeless quest. But the outcome of her own near-hopeless quest stands before her even now, safely returned home, and Jaime is not to be underestimated.)

To her surprise, Sansa does not open the paper, merely folds it neatly, each crease carefully sharpened through the use of her fingernails, as she holds the rest of the meeting. Brienne thinks she might escape, find a quiet corner to regain her composure so she can face the sympathy, the murmured condolences and hands resting on her forearm as they say _I know he was dear to you_, as if the entirety of Winterfell did not know how dear he was. That might be the worst of it--he’s been gone too short a time for memories to fade, and she doesn’t yet have it in her to lie. So she’ll slip away, shed her tears, return to her duties, and hope no-one looks to closely when she murmurs that it was such a tragedy.

It is a good plan, except when the meeting is done, Sansa catches her eye and tilts her head and says, “Please stay, Ser Brienne, we have much still to discuss.”

Pod sends her a short, sad glance as the rest of the group files out--she’ll have to be the one to tell him, she knows, and he’ll mourn nearly as much as she will. As she has been since that night in the courtyard.

When they are alone, Sansa hands her the message before reading it. Brienne takes it, surprised at how steady her hand is.

“Should I read it aloud?”

“No.” Sansa gives her a small, kind smile, the sort that might break Brienne if she allows herself to feel it. “I thought you might like some privacy.”

And then she turns, pretends to be absorbed in a ledger accounting for Winterfell’s grain stores as Brienne unfolds the creased paper, as her eyes skim the small letters, as her knees nearly give out. Two queens dead, two men to face trial.

“Lady Sansa, your brother… Please, this was meant for your eyes.”

Sansa reads it, her eyes flicking over the message twice. Her lips purse.

“We may need to head south, but I will wait to hear from Arya,” she says.

Brienne bows. “Of course, my lady.”

She thinks she might escape, has turned and begun to slide towards the door, when Sansa speaks again.

“It seems you were correct, ser,” she says. “He went south to kill his sister.”

Brienne is glad her face is turned away, because she grimaces before she can stop herself. That was _not_ what she had said, but she is glad it is what Sansa heard. 

“He is a good man, my lady,” she says, her hand finding the hilt of Oathkeeper out of habit. “I hope his punishment is merciful.”


	22. "No," Brienne breathed, in both horror and awe. (Five Sentence Prompts)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was doing the "Send me the first line of a fic and I will write the next five", and while most of them aren't long enough to bring over to ao3, nire-the-mithridatist asked: _"No," Brienne breathed, in both horror and awe. "This can't be—*no*," she repeated. "Compose yourself," Jaime said. "We knew this was a possible outcome, and we went through with it anyway." Brienne shook her head, staring at the—the *thing*, and said, "Not like this, we didn't." _ and I did five sentences for each sentence she supplied. The result was pure cuteness, the sort of thing I'd like to be able to find again. So here we are!

"No,“ Brienne breathed, in both horror and awe. "This can’t be—_no_,” she repeated. 

“Compose yourself,” Jaime said. “We knew this was a possible outcome, and we went through with it anyway." 

Brienne shook her head, staring at the—the _thing_, and said, "Not like this, we didn’t.”

“It’s just a dragon.”

“Just… Just a dragon,” she said flatly. “Of course, Jaime. How foolish of me to think that _a great bloody dragon_ was something to be concerned about.”

Jaime extended his golden hand, allowed the crimson monster to curl into his palm. “He’s only a baby.”

“Babies grow! Into dragons! Great big flying dragons! Where the fuck are we supposed to keep a _dragon_?”

Jaime shrugged, and Brienne very briefly considered throttling her husband. Who had a dragon in his hand. Hatched from the supposedly-fake egg Tyrion had gifted them _as a joke_ for their wedding. She was a generally composed woman, but there were _limits_. 

“Fucking Lannisters,” she spat, which only made Jaime chuckle.

“I don’t recall you cursing the name quite so much last night, wife.”

“That was before the dragon.”

The dragon which had seemingly just yawned as it fell asleep, like an animal far less dangerous. Jaime reached out with his fingers–his fleshy, easily charred fingers–to stroke its head, and it made some sort of noise that was lethally adorable. Giving an exasperated sigh, Brienne stepped closer. It was sweet, in its own odd way, and she should know better than to judge so quickly.

“Tarth,” she said. “There’s mountains, and wild goats, and a cavern near Evenfall Hall large enough to house it. Him.”

“Tarth,” Jaime agreed, his smile as bright as the sun, and as lethal as the dragon who had wrapped its tail around his golden thumb.


	23. Hot in Herre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was GOING to be Tumblr only, but then I realised the chances of having to find it and relying on Tumblr search engines at some later date were too high, so...
> 
> I made a joke about how it’s ridiculous it was that we’ve never had someone use Hot in Herre in a modern AU given Jaime’s… intense sauveness. And then people egged it on and I was just migraine-hungover enough to listen. If there's a joke that doesn't make sense in here, presume it's Because Canada. Seriously. Gal the Shoe is Ed the Sock. Don't google, it won't explain anything.

The worst part of hitting his mid-30s is that Jaime seems to have multiple weddings a month to attend, none of them enjoyable. He’s got some hope for tonight’s, if only because it’s Addam and the suitably terrifying northern woman he’s marrying means that Brienne has made the trek south to attend as well, but the first half of the reception is the elegant but family-friendly affair that Jaime can smell his father’s influence all over. He’d _warned_ his cousin that dangers of holding an event at Casterly Rock, but Addam had been going on about warriors and knights and whatever-the-fuck it was his new wife was so into on that front. (Dacey? Darcy? He’s only met her a handful of times, his attempts at befriending the woman soundly rebuffed with mutters about Lannisters; pointed comments that Addam’s mother had been a Lannister too had done nothing to endear him to her. He was frankly surprised he’d still managed to be best man.)

But then the kids and older generation had retired--aside from Olenna Tyrell, who would probably outlast every other guest--and… well, it was remarkable how quickly Casterly’s Grand Ballroom had morphed into a nightclub circa fifteen years ago. The lights, the music, the frankly horrific grinding that passes as dancing. The really terrible alcohol. All of which is weirdly delightful, except there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in that time and it’s frankly pathetic to admit that he’s been pining after the same woman since his first year of university, especially when their work keeps them on opposite ends of the continent for years at a time.

Even more especially when she’s never shown a damn glimmer of interest in him in all those years.

But he’s been drinking and she’s been beside him all night and they’ve affectionately bickered their way through updates in their lives--she’s _still_ single and he cannot fathom why, especially living in the north when the men seem to have a healthy appreciation for women who could crush them, but he’s just selfish enough that he can’t lament the fact--and, well…

_Hot in… so hot in here... so hot in..._

“Brienne!” he shouts as he turns to her, his voice a little louder than he intends, but that’s what enthusiasm does to him. “Come dance with me!”

She looks _horrified_, and so he pulls out the secret trump card he’s held on to for _years_.

“You danced with Renly.”

Alright, so it wasn’t meant to sound quite so _petulant_, but it works. Not the way he _intends_ it to work, true, but she crosses her arms and scowls.

“I don’t know the song.”

In the background, Nelly’s broken into lyrics about bodacious asses, and Jaime just cannot believe that anyone, not even proper and quiet Brienne Tarth, could have escaped that particular song. It was everywhere. For years. If they were making a soundtrack of the era and left it off, its target audience would riot. 

“Bullshit.”

She shrugs, not blinking as she meets his eyes.

“Tarthian Content Laws,” she says. “Stations had to play at least 40% Tarth content. We had one radio station, which prided itself on doubling the government standards, and an hour long music show once a week on the local channel that was hosted by Gal the Shoe. You’d be shocked how little I know.”

“But it was… You went to KLU!”

“If I wasn’t in class or on the rink, I spent 90% of my free time in the library or the gym.”

Which… fair. Both her grades and her body would attest to that. He does a weird little shimmy-thing that he wouldn’t admit to under any other circumstance, and extends a hand.

“It’s easy. Just follow my lead.”

“I don’t dance.”

“You don’t dance? Or you don’t dance with me?”

She flinches, and however quickly she masks it, he thinks he might have hurt her. Not his intention. He drops his hand, and turns back to watch the dancing. Addam and Dacey/Darcy are dead centre and have clearly replaced the bedding ceremony of old with being two seconds away from fucking on the dance floor. More than he ever wanted to see of his cousin or his terrifying warrior-wife.

“So what music _did _you have?” he asks, not daring to look at Brienne. It’s fine. He can talk and lick his wounds without being too much of an asshole. Mostly.

“Quarterchange. Mai Lejardin. Selyse Dion.” Jaime grimaces, and Brienne laughs. “There were better options, but they never managed to get quite so popular off the island.” 

“So if one of them came on…”

“I’m not dancing, Jaime. Drop it.”

The song is almost over, and with the fearless idiocy that’s defined his life, he leans up so his mouth is at her ear.

“No dancing then,” he concedes. “But it really is hot in here. If you want to...”

Whatever the fuck he’s expecting out of this stunt, it’s not the way she turns on him. 

“I don’t do drunken hookups, Lannister.”

She hasn’t called him Lannister since that first year. It had been annoying at the time, but now it’s just another thing that makes him want her.

“Neither do I,” he says, tilting his chin a little in challenge. _Misinterpret **that**, Tarth_, he hopes it says. He underestimates her willingness to be obtuse.

“Then why--”

He kisses her silent, suddenly certain it’s the only thing that she will understand. And it’s so much better than he’d imagined, awkward and strong and then she’s taking the lead and his hand is in her hair and--

She pulls away. Cocks her head, as if to listen to the new song that’s just begun. Groans.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I’m pretty sure that’s _The Thong Song_. Not even content laws could save us from _that_ one.”


	24. Spyglass (Sapphires and Sirens, POV change)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > ajoblotofjunk asked:
>> 
>> You know what fic I'm here for. POV for Sapphires and Sirens. Please.

Jaime knows, the moment that the Captain begins to purchase more supplies than usual. Not many, an extra barrel here, two sacks there, at every port even when they have no need to stop. He is not a fool, he knows what it means, and when they dock at Tarth he wastes no time in telling his aunt that he’ll be back after nightfall. Genna mutters an acknowledgement and Tyrion says nothing with a deliberateness that sets Jaime’s teeth on edge, and Cersei is below deck; Jaime saunters off _The Kingslayer_ with an insouciance that gives away nothing, pocket knife in hand.

He’s in luck—only a few streets away from the docks he sees a familiar tall frame, topped with white-blonde hair that makes her reminiscent of the lighthouses her family has maintained for years. 

“Evening, Sapphire.”

She spins, faster than one would think of someone so larger, and the crooked smile and shining eyes almost strip him of his composure entirely. His fingers _fumble_ as he tucks the knife away, and if she notices she had the good grace not to say. 

“I didn’t know _The Kingslayer_ was in port,” she says. 

“Did you look for me, Sapphire?” he asks, lips curling into a smirk at the thought. 

“Only to avoid you,” she retorts, sharper, more confident than the last time he saw her. It fills him with a sort of delight, especially when she arches a brow as she says, “Though I might like to meet that bookish brother you mentioned one of these days. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t exist. ”

Half-a-dozen thoughts hit him at once—Tyrion would say something _awful_, and they’d probably get along, and none of it matters because they won’t be meeting anytime soon—but shrugs them all off to say, “Oh no, he’d charm you completely and you’d be my good-sister within a moon.”

“And one of us would end up over the side of the ship a sennight after that,” she replies. “Best to avoid it, then.”

“Absolutely,” he agrees, and he almost leaves it at that, a fond, teasing memory on which to part. But he can’t, however selfish it may be, and so he drops his voice and leans in slightly. “Can you make it to the cove tonight?”

Her brow furrows, just for a moment, but, “I’ll try,” is all she says. “Just before dark.”

They part and he spends the next few hours visiting shops and speaking to people, a performance in nonchalance that he knows is important to buy the crew time. He goes back to the ship briefly, to retrieve his father’s spyglass, and then heads to Visenya’s Cove. 

It’s his favourite place, the cove. He heads to a particularly nice outcropping of rocks near the water, stretching his legs and tilting his head back, feeling the sunlight on his face and listening to the soft lapping of the waves. It’s quiet here, enough of the sea to feel like home, but steadier than the ship will ever be. 

He hears Brienne approach, but neither of them says anything as she settles beside him. He opens his eyes, sits upright, and they watch the way sunlight skitters across the bright blue waters. 

“We’ll be gone longer than usual this time,” he eventually says.

It’s the first time he’s said it, and the words are loud no matter how quietly he speaks. She mulls it over in that steady way of hers.

“You’ll stay safe?”

There’s an earnestness in it, steady and honest and true, and he thinks she may be the only friend he’s ever had. 

“You could join us,” he says, though he knows she won’t say yes. There is too much for her on Tarth. “See the world. The Captain wouldn’t mind. You’ll never be climbing the rigging, but a woman with your strength would be damned good in a storm.”

She sighs, gentle and sad. ”I thought sirens were meant to tempt sailors onto land, Jaime, not out to sea.”

He chuckles, then reaches into the bag at his feet, pulling out his father’s beloved spyglass. She takes it carefully, and raises it to her eye; he watches as her face shifts, blooming in delight at whatever it is she sees on the horizon. He will miss her so terribly. 

“You’ll find your way back with this,” she says, when she finally lowers it.

“It’s yours,” he replies. “So long as you use it to look for crimson sails.”

He doesn’t know when, if, they will be back, but… it would be good, to know that someone wanted him to. 

“Every morning,” she vows.

They don’t speak after that, parting only when the moon has risen high overhead.


	25. “It was me,” Jaime admitted, deciding to tell her the truth, at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > rosenlily-aka-choconut asked: “It was me,” Jaime admitted, deciding to tell her the truth, at last. 
>> 
>> For the "Send me the first line of a fic and I'll write at least five more" meme. 
> 
> Oh man, I saw this and went “ANGST!” and then promptly remembered a stupid event from high school I hadn’t thought of in years and wrote super fluff instead.I find romantic gestures that actually completely miss the mark absolutely fucking hilarious, and teenagers are absolute dumbasses.

“It was me,” Jaime admitted, deciding to tell her the truth, at last.

It wasn’t a secret, as such. It just had never come up, and certainly not like _this_. 

Brienne paused in the midst of her story of The Time Brienne Tarth Played Hooky In High School to look at him, and even all these years later there was a hint of hurt in her eyes. He’d never realised. “You...?”

“I didn’t know, about Connington at your previous school,” he said, smiling wryly. “You were new, and shy, and Tyrion thought it was the sort of gesture someone ‘like you’ would appreciate.”

_It_ was a stupid Maiden’s Day fundraiser, where in the leadup to the day itself you could send a carnation--white meant _I’m glad we’re friends_, yellow meant _you’re my best friend_, pink meant _I have a crush on you_, and red meant _I love you_\-- and a note to other students, delivered to their homeroom. It wasn’t meant to be anonymous, but Jaime had known three-quarters of the student council and it was easy enough to arrange. It had seemed noble, at the time, but by the glares of every single woman at the table it had actually been incredibly stupid. Still, he’d make a valiant effort to come off as _slightly_ less of an asshole, if only because the idea of being crushed by Brienne’s entire Women’s Self-Defense Class was not in his plans for the evening.

“Brienne had only transferred to King’s Landing the previous semester,” he began, flashing the women his most effortless smile. “We were on the swim team and she was in several of my classes and she was… nice. Or she seemed nice, when you could draw her out of her shell. And my brother, sick to death of me complaining about the half-mermaid obliterating my records, suggested that I send her flowers so maybe she’d crack a damn smile.”

Beside him, Brienne snorted. “You listened to Tyrion. Who was eleven.”

“Eleven and already had more girlfriends than I ever had,” Jaime muttered in defense, and then smiled at the women again. Some of them were softening, he could tell, and so he continued, “I sent her a white carnation every day, with a perfectly nice compliment.”

“One of them was about the size of my shoulders, Jaime.”

He turned to Brienne with an absolute shit-eating grin, noting the way she still blushed slightly. “Are you telling me that I _don’t _admire your shoulders?”

“I was fifteen! There is no fifteen-year-old girl in the world that would take that as a compliment.”

“I would have,” piped up one of the women at the table, a dark-haired northerner he hadn’t caught the name of. Jaime decided she was his favourite person though, at least until she turned her eyes on him. “But that is a particularly clueless comment.”

“The others were nicer?” he offered--he’d complimented her eyes and her kindness and… gods, he couldn’t even remember anymore. He’d been young and dumb and entirely unaware that Tyrion’s machinations were in an effort to get him to stop mooning over the new girl. 

“They were,” Brienne conceded, “if I wasn’t already convinced it was some horrible prank.”

Jaime grimaced. “Yeah, it… it was probably a good thing you skipped that final day. The final carnation was pink and still anonymous, because fifteen-year-old Jaime was an absolute idiot and thought it would be flattering to hear that someone liked you, even if it wasn’t real.”

He risked looking at Brienne, and found her looking at him, the corners of her lips twitching in that way that told him she was trying to hide her amusement. ”And what, pray tell, would thirty-five year old Jaime send instead?”

He rolled his shoulders. “Yellow and red, like any decent Lannister.” She looked entirely unimpressed, the bloody woman. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “And a note promising to take diaper duty for the entire weekend.”

Below the table, her hand squeezed his thigh, and--twenty years late--she smiled at his gift, wide and bright and open.

It was worth the wait. 


	26. Teacher/Student AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > ajoblotofjunk asked:
>> 
>> Mua ha ha. I'm glad you did this. Your choice: 27 or 3. 
> 
> Welp, someone prompted 27 for another ship, so... 3 it is? Except I totally chickened out on the student/teacher premise. 

When Jaime moves north, he rents a small house, sight unseen, only a few minutes from the office; it’s a short-term lease, and will give him a chance to look carefully before he buys. (He’s still not entirely certain he won’t cave within six weeks, head back to King’s Landing with his tail between his legs like his father predicted.) He’s been there three days when he hears music coming through the open window—it’s an old folk song, sweet and melancholy, and he finds himself drifting to the window to find its source.

There is a man—no, on second look he’s fairly certain it’s a woman, though her hair is short and she’s in a man’s plaid shirt and jeans—playing a guitar, and even from here he can see that it’s battered from heavy use. He watches her until the song ends, when she glances at her watch and then waves to someone coming up the driveway. It’s Arya Stark, he realises, and for a moment he thinks Catelyn must have sent her over to check he’d settled in, but then she lopes up the few steps of the neighbour’s porch, a guitar over her shoulder. He shakes his head and resumes unpacking, and doesn’t think of the woman again until nearly a week later.

The problem, though, is that once he starts thinking about her—she spends time most evenings playing music on her porch, folk songs and songs from his childhood and sometimes things he’d never heard and thinks perhaps she wrote herself—he finds it hard to stop. He sees the people that come and go on evenings and weekends, usually children but a few adults, most with guitars of their own; she must be a music teacher, which at least gives him half an excuse to speak with her. So one evening, when he’s seen the neighbour has settled onto the swing of her porch with a tall mug and her guitar, he steps outside and crosses the two narrow drives.

“Evening!” he calls, smiling.

The neighbour looks up, startled, and this close he can see that her fingers are long and elegant, the sort of thing that would have made his childhood piano tutor weep with joy. Perhaps it is an advantage for the guitar as well—his father had insisted that his children learn classic instruments, some dated ideas of accomplishment and status forbidding them from touching so mundane as a guitar.

“You’re Jaime Lannister,” says the neighbour, and her fingers pluck out the first few notes of _The Rains of Castamere_. 

“I see that my reputation precedes me,” he says, feeling his easy smile fall into a sneer even though he’d _promised_ himself he wouldn’t be like that any more.

The neighbour nods with her chin in the direction Jaime had come. “I was the one that told Cat about the house. Promised that if you seemed to be plotting world domination I’d let her know.”

Jaime laughs despite himself. “No, that would be my sister’s MO. I really am the recently disinherited and insufferable twat that I claim to be, though with more morals than people usually grant me.” The neighbour doesn’t reply, not even with a smile, so Jaime forges ahead. “I can hear you, when you play.”

“The houses are close together, I can’t help it.”

“No, I meant… it’s nice. You’re a teacher?”

“Yeah. It helped pay the bills when my father…” the woman shrugs. “Cancer. I couldn’t work, for awhile, but I could do this. He liked to hear the students. And now… I guess I’m a teacher.”

Jaime nods. “What are your rates?”

The woman snorts. “Cheap enough you should look somewhere else. I teach beginners.”

“I’m a beginner,” he says.

“I don’t take students who won’t put in the time.”

“I’m the youngest lawyer to get an Dayne Achievement Award. You think I bought that with my good looks and daddy’s money?”

“You do seem to have an excess of both,” she replies dryly. 

“Flattered,” he says, and then—quite possibly because he’s never liked being told no—adds, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay double your rate, a month in advance, and you can fire me at any point without needing to refund it.”

“Do you even know my name?”

“Neighbour with the guitar?” Jaime guesses. 

That does get a smile. “It’s Brienne. I can fit you in Tuesdays at 7, or Sunday afternoons.”

That was easier than he’d thought; he’s almost disappointed, if he’s honest. “No argument?”

Brienne rolls her eyes. “I need a new roof. Pick a time.”

“Sundays,” Jaime says. “I don’t know what my work days are going to be like yet, and I don't want you to think I’m slacking if I’m late home one nightt.” 

She gives a curt nod. “Be here at 3. If you need to borrow a guitar, it’s an extra ten dragons a session.” 

“I’ll bring one,” Jaime says. There’s a music shop a few blocks away, he’d seen it on the drive in; buying a decent guitar won’t be a problem. “And maybe after, I could show you some finger motions of my own.”

He regrets saying it as soon as the words leave his mouth, a lifelong habit of winning women over with crude flirtations (aided, undoubtedly, by the good looks and money) hard to break. Brienne just rolls her eyes again, her expression flat.

“Not interested,” she says. “Don’t make me regret this.”

She might. But she might not. He won’t know unless he stays. And, he thinks, he’ll stay at least long enough to learn to play _The Rains of Castamere_ on the guitar, if only for the satisfaction of seeing his father’s face when he does. After that? Who can say. 


	27. "i thought you hated me but i just accidentally sent you a booty text and you accepted and i am seriously considering it” au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll do a bunch of prompts today, I'm in the mood for little nonsense things," I said. I apologise for the result

GUESS WHAT I’M-- 

No, delete_. _

IF YUO CAN GUESS THE COLOUR OF MY PANTIES, ILL LET YOU--

No. No, no, no. 

Seriously, there had to be a text message that conveyed “I’m lonely and horny and my vibrator might give me better orgasms, but it’s not the same as actual contact with a human being, even if that human being is my cheating ex” which not even tipsy Brienne was willing to admit to. No. Fine. She’d just say it.

WANNA FUCK?

Maybe Hyle would appreciate the bluntness. She quickly stuck the phone on the coffee table, screen down, and got up to refill her wine glass. Maybe she should get a cat. Wandered back to her couch, flicked through Netflix and found the options lacking. Picked up the phone, half-hoping Hyle had just changed his number and not bothered to tell her. 

THAT’S A HIGH PRICE FOR DROPPING OFF A COUPLE OF STRAY PACKAGES.

What?

WAIT, WERE YOU SERIOUS?

What the _ fuck _was Hyle--

LOOK, IF YOU’RE SERIOUS, I’VE GOT A PACKAGE HERE FOR YOU.

There was a dick pic. There was a dick pic that was definitely _ not _ Hyle’s, and somehow this was the thing that made her look at the message thread.

The message thread that was, up until 17 minutes ago, just a string of “Your Amazon package ended up here again, I’ll drop it off after I have dinner.” and “Are you in? And how much shit do you order online?” with her annoying as fuck upstairs neighbour who was apparently incapable of inputting his address correctly. Her annoying as fuck and obscenely beautiful neighbour, who was apparently down with fucking a near stranger on a Saturday night and was right next to Hyle on her contacts list. 

Was it the worst option? 

No, scratch that. Was it worse than fuckboy Hyle who couldn’t even muster himself up to Full Dick Status because that would require _ caring _ about something? Probably not. Maybe she should...

Her phone buzzed again, and she nearly threw the fucking thing across the room. Oh gods, he was-- if he was serious, and he was obnoxious but never before sent unsolicited dick pics so he might very well be… She glanced at the screen instead, fuzzily trying to find the way to say “Wrong number, sorry, but hey congrats on the attractive dick” that wouldn’t make her want to curl up and die next time she had to drop off whatever package had ended up on her doorstep, and saw his latest message.

HEY, ARE YOU OKAY?

Before she could reply, several more came in rapid succession.

THIS IS A WEIRD BOOTY CALL. 

IS IT SOME SORT OF SECRET SOS WHILE YOU’RE BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY MASTER CRIMINALS? 

BRIENNE, I’M GOING TO COME DOWN.

No. No, no, no. She hurriedly typed:

ALL GOOD. WRONG NUMBER. MEANT FOR MY EX. SAVED ME FROM SOME ILL-ADVISED SEX, SO THANKS.

She couldn’t look away as the dots indicating he was typing appeared and disappeared on her screen for what seemed like a very long time.

SORRY.

FOR THE PIC I MEAN.

Brienne took a sip from her half-forgotten wine glass before replying.

NO WORRIES, I STRATED IT. 

THAT WAS A *TYPO* ARE YOU DRUNK? 

I’M FIME

FNIE

*FINE*

No reply. Of course not. Brienne tossed the phone beside her and turned back to Netflix, though the options hadn’t improved in the last few minutes. Her phone buzzed again. She shoved it under the cushion. It didn’t muffle the sound nearly well enough, so she pulled it out again. 

HEY, DO YOU WANT ME TO COME BY? BAD SEX WITH A BAD EX NEVER ENDS WELL. CAN KEEP YOU COMPANY SO YOU DON’T TEXT HIM? HER? CONSIDER IT A THANKS FOR YOUR INFINITE POSTAL PATIENCE. NETFLIX AND NO CHILL.

I HAVE LEFTOVER PIZZA, IF THAT MAKES IT MORE TEMPTING?

Brienne tapped her finger on the screen for a long time before sending a simple

SURE, JAIME.

OKAY, WILL BE FIVE MINUTES. SHOULD PROB PUT ON PANTS.

Brienne snorted despite herself, and shook her head. She really should have gotten herself a cat. Or maybe just a better vibrator. But this had to be better than sex with Hyle, at least.


	28. Booty Call (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, by request, a short continuation of the last ficlet. Tumblr has decided not to let me reblog or make posts in the browser, which I'm... super happy about. Made my brilliant day of prompt fills go super well... 😒

This no-booty booty call had been a terrible idea. It was bad enough the Northern Postal Service was utterly determined Jaime’s address didn’t exist--when he’d tried to get answers he was given some drivel about the database taking up to 18 months to update, depending on the individual company--and at least one courier company was incapable of noting the difference between 23 and 23a, but it was… fine. A couple of times a week the downstairs neighbour would text him there was a package and then stomp up the stairs to shove the package at him, sometimes even lingering for a few minutes to speak with him. He learnt enough about her in those moments--her name was Brienne; she was a southern transplant, like him; she didn’t laugh often but when she did he could hear it through the floor; she was that sort of terrifyingly competent that Jaime had always been attracted to. It was fine. 

And then he got the text.

Maybe the text would have been fine too, if he hadn’t-- well, he’d always been impulsive. And overly confident. He’d sent that terrible dick joke and well-lit dick pic before realising that Brienne had mentioned a boyfriend a couple of months back, and was likely not trying to fuck the neighbour she barely knew. And when she didn’t reply, it didn’t take much to realise he’d been skeevy, and “Sorry, it’s been a good two years since anybody has actually touched me beyond brushes on public transportation, can’t even get a decent handshake since I lost the damn thing, might have been overly enthusiastic” wouldn’t quite cut it. So he’d laughed it off and then she’d said bad ex sex, and somehow _that_ was familiar enough he found himself offering to go to her place for the evening.

The thing was, other than the things he’d gleaned in their brief conversation, he _didn’t_ know her. They were pretty much strangers. And now he was sitting on her couch, in her apartment, a pizza box sat between them and a generic action movie on her TV. He wondered whether she was regretting accepting his offer, which all things considered would be entirely fair. He was considering how to make a polite escape when her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it.

“Hyle,” she said. “The ex.”

“Am I interrupting a booty call after all?” 

Brienne snorted. “I can’t believe that I--” she shook her head. “I cannot believe the urge for human contact made me forget why I dumped him in the first place. How pathetic.”

It was a surprisingly honest statement, no doubt brought forth by the three-quarter gone bottle of wine, but it was too close to his own musings to let go unremarked. 

“I don’t think it’s pathetic,” he said. “My brother is always going on about monkeys and human touch and… well, I usually tune him out. He mostly seems to use it as an excuse for fucking half of King’s Landing. But I think… you miss the connection, if it goes on long enough. It doesn’t even have to be sex, just….”

“Touch.”

“Yeah.”

Brienne moved the pizza box onto the coffee table and shuffled closer, so they were nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“Is this okay?” she asked quietly. 

This close he could catch the sweet hint of wine on her breath, feel the warmth of her body; he extended his arm along the back of the couch, still surprised when she settled against him. Just… touch. Connection. They turned their attention back to the film, where a particular unlikely ball of flame engulfed the protagonist’s car.

“I’m sorry,” Jaime said, leaning in close to whisper against her ear. “This movie is terrible. Can we watch something else?”

Her chuckle is quiet, but makes her whole body shake against him. It’s not a bad way to spend a Saturday night. 


	29. J/B, barefoot, any rating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiraziwrites asked:  
a wild prompt appears: J/B, barefoot, any rating.
> 
> And also serhumphreysbrokencollarbone requested, and I quote, "le petit prince asking you to draw him a sheep but it's me asking you to write Jaime watching Brienne (and being very soft about it) wading into the warm seas for the first time after years at war on their first day on Tarth so I don't have to" This is the softest thing I've ever written.

They go to Tarth six months after the war, when peace finally feels as if it might be possible, if only for a little while. His new goodfather meets them at the docks, embraces Brienne in a slightly adrift way, as if he cannot believe she has returned even though she stands before him as solid and real as ever, greets Jaime with distant politeness. They ride to Evenfall, discuss the island and all the things that have changed since Brienne had left all those years before--the poor harvest and the short winter and the leniency in taxes, but the _people_ too, and Jaime thinks that it is not a bad thing, to be a lord like that. His opinion is even sought a time or two, and he dusts off long-unused lessons to have insights that make Brienne smile at him, and he knows when he does not know enough to say so. It is a fine welcome, and by the time the luncheon is served, rich with Tarth’s foods and men from around the whole of the island, Jaime has stopped looking for a hidden slight in every action. When the meal is done, however, Lord Selwyn turns to Brienne. 

“It is still there, if you wish to visit,” he says. “I will keep Ser Jaime occupied.”

A smile splits his wife’s face, one that Jaime has never seen. (He has noted all of her smiles; this one is young in a way he has never known her to be, and for a moment he is jealous that he could not invoke it himself.) 

“No need, father,” Brienne says. “I’ll show him.”

She grabs his arm, tugs gently, and as soon as they have left the hall, she breaks into a run, through the corridor and out a servant’s door, through a courtyard, in the direction where he can hear the sea, laughing as she turns to make certain he has followed; it takes most of Jaime’s control not to simply gawk at this… this _girl _that he thought he knew. They follow a narrow footpath through a copse of trees to emerge at a chine that cuts its way through the cliff Evenfall Hall sits upon. The scrub brush here is lighter greens and yellows, with occasional blooms of blue and purple wildflowers--it’s beautiful, even before they begin to pick their way down the steep path and can see the ocean properly. Jaime pauses, stares for a long moment, the sun and the water and Brienne taking his breath away.

“Faster, Jaime,” she calls back, and his feet start moving again, propelling him towards her as he always seems to be, and they make their way to the soft sandy beach that stretches in a crescent shape marked by two jutting cliffs--they are on one end of the curve, the cliff to their right varying shades of brown, and the other end is marked by a lighthouse. Whitewashed, he thinks at first, and then the angle of the light shifts and he remembers the marble Tarth is known for.

He turns to face Brienne, who is watching him as if waiting for his reaction; not nerves, he realises, but _anticipation_. 

“This is…” He’s seen beauty, many times--beautiful scenery and beautiful women and all the gold and jewels that glitter on the necks of courtiers, but never has it left him speechless the way this does, the way this feels like home and a secret and… “Casterly is nothing like this.”

Brienne laughs. “Remove your boots.”

There’s a rock, large enough for him to lean against as he unlaces and removes his boots and socks, as he plunges his toes into silt-fine sand that is cool despite the hot weather. When he looks up, Brienne has shed her all but her tunic and her trousers, rolled near to her knees so her calves are on full display, and waded into the water. She’s turned her face upwards in bliss, towards the sun, and the clean lines of her body shimmer in the light; he knows that if she remains long she will burn, knows that if he steps closer he will see all the little details that make her Brienne, the scars and the imperfections he has traced with fingers and tongue, the vitality, but from here she is ethereal, impossible to believe. And then she turns to look at him with the same open happiness and he is hurrying to join her.

The water is cool, cooler even than the sand, but comforting. Small waves lap at him, wetting the hems of his trousers, but he pays it no mind, not when Brienne, _his wife_, is kissing him in the surf.

“The beach is only for us,” she explains when she pulls away. “It’s almost impossible to reach save by the chine, and it is the only place father insists we keep not for the people. I learnt to paddle here, or so he says--I was too young to remember, of course.”

“Of course,” Jaime agrees with a smile, suspecting she’d come from the womb able to swim and wield a sword and likely lift an aurochs.

“There’s another thing,” she says, sliding her hand into his. “Follow me.”

She wades through the water, seeming to know on instinct the shallowest route, along the curve of the cliff and around, where there is a group of large, flat rocks rising from the water. She scrambles onto them with ease, turns to help Jaime onto them, laughs when he is already following. 

“I used to come here, when I needed peace,” she says, once he is beside her. She has stretched out, miles of leg before her as she rests on her elbows, face turned skyward once more. This close he can see the way the sunlight catches her lashes, making her glow, the way she wiggles her bare toes as they dry. “Even my father learnt to stay away.”

He hears what she doesn’t say, stretches himself out to lay beside her on this sea-slick rock warmed in the sun. There is enough room for them both, though barely, and Brienne laughs again.

“Of course, there was much more room back then, or perhaps less of me.”

“I, for one, appreciate that there is so much of you now.”

She rolls her eyes. “Jaime.”

He glances around, confirming that they are alone, runs a finger down her jaw, leans in to whisper against her ear. “When you wrap yourself around me, Brienne, when I see the breadth of your shoulders and the length of your legs… I thank gods I don’t believe in that I am allowed to love you.” 

“You’re ridiculous,” she sighs, and there is no sting in the words, no rebuke; he kisses her throat in return, licks the salty spray of sea and sweat from her skin, slides his right arm behind her back so he can roll closer, rests his hand on the laces of her trousers.

He is much better than he was all those moons ago in Winterfell, or perhaps she has taken to fastening her clothes with loosening in mind; either way it is the work of a moment to unknot the laces, slip his beneath the waistband to find the curls there, then the slick wet heat of her. 

“Jaime,” she sighs, shifting her legs wider as he strokes; it’s slow, not chasing release but simply an extra pleasure as they lounge, but eventually she begins to move her hips, tiny little aborted thrusts as she bites back a moan, as her skin flushes red from more than the heat of the sun and her toes curl in pleasure, until she breaks apart as gently as the waves that lap against the rock in this secret place. 

He licks the taste of her from his fingers, kisses her. Rolls away, so he can gaze at the clear sky above them until he drifts into a quiet contentedness, languid and warm.

It is impossible to know what the future holds. Perhaps there will be peace for longer than a moment, and lordly duties, and children of their own to swim in the waves. But for now there is the sun and the water and Brienne, and it is all he could ever want. 


	30. Enemies to lovers with supernatural elements/AU with supernatural elements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just posting some Tumblr prompt fills here so they are easier to find. First up two date meme prompts set in the werewolf AU I never quite manage to write.

She was fifteen when it happened–pirates attempted to come ashore under the light of a full moon and she’d grabbed her sword and joined her father’s men, and her father had looked at her with nearly-fond exasperation and said that if she was to be the next Evenstar she might as well learn what fighting really was. And it had been… by the Seven, it had been _exhilarating_. Awful, too, no slaughtered pig could erase the shock on a man’s face as she ran him through, but it felt _right_. All the parts of her that were too big, too strong for her septa were _advantages _here, and she was determined to train more, think of drills as her septa lectured her on needlepoint, imagine the steps of courtly dances were just new ways to move with a sword in her hand.

And then the wolf attacked.

She barely remembered it after, she’d been riding alongside her father and listening to his plans to increase coastal defenses so that the next time the pirates would not reach the shore, and then there was a snarl and pain as her horse went down, as teeth tore at her face, a monstrous maw and sharp teeth all she could see, then a yip as someone kicked the wolf away, the fight moving out of her sight. She should have gotten up, grabbed her sword and fought, but the sensation of blood on her face, searing pain, the stars cold and distant above her, kept her down.

When the fight was done, her father’s men stood over the body of a man. Just a man, and not a wolf.

She’d been sent to foster in Winterfell before the next moon’s turn.

* * *

The meal was almost done when the itch began, and she hastily ate the last of her soup and made her excuses. The hour had slipped away from her, distracted by the guests in Winterfell, and it was inexcusable. She still had time enough though, time to reach the forest, shed her clothes–

“Lady Brienne,” called a voice, and she turned to see the Kingslayer approaching with an easy lope; the hairs on the back of her neck raised, and she bit back a growl.

“Ser Jaime.”

There was no need for discourtesies, however much the man vexed her. He seemed unaware of her ire–this close to the change she could catch hints of his scent and there was no hint of hidden anxiety or anger, just a calm, crisp smell that reminded Brienne of the woods on a cold night. 

“I look forward to crossing swords with you in the morrow,” he said, all manners and grace. She disliked it immensely, especially when he gave her a sly smile, as if they shared in some joke. “I’ve heard much about the wolves of Winterfell.”

“I am of Tarth, ser.”

There was something deeply familiar in his green eyes as he looked her over, slow and evaluating, as he licked his lips like a hungry cur.

“Perhaps,” he said, “but you’re a wolf all the same.”


	31. Pining with Soulmates

They are in Harrenhal when he sees her mark, right in the middle of her chest, and nearly laughs then and there. Of course. Of fucking course. _Soulmates_. Not like him and Cersei, two halves of a whole, but the person who is meant to carry you through your hardest moment. He’d stopped believing in them after Aerys, but looking at her now…

“How old _are _you?” he asks.

“What does it matter?” she replies, arms crossing over her body and hiding the mark. It doesn’t change anything; he knows every line and curve of it, and she must know he bears the same.

“Perhaps it doesn’t,” he shrugs, sinking into the waters of the bath.

“There are other tubs.”

“This one suits me fine.” He stares. She’s younger than him, he knows that much. Tyrion’s age, perhaps. Which meant… she must have been a child when Aerys ruled, and the idea that she might have seen his life then– “I won’t bite, my lady. Unless you wished me to.”

The revulsion on her faces _does _make him laugh, and perhaps it is the strangeness of laughter or the lingering fever, but he finds himself telling her of Aerys, anger seeping into every word as if to shake her, as if to say _This is what I have seen, this is what I have done, how dare you show up now?_ She is tender in her response, in the way she catches him when the bath swims before him and he nearly faints, and perhaps that is all the reason the gods need. 

*

They don’t speak of the mark. Not then, not at the dinner where Roose Bolton informs Jaime he is to return to King’s Landing alone, not when he goes to her cell that is meant to be a room to say his goodbyes. They know. Soulmates pass each other once, in the time of greatest need, and never again.

*

He goes back for her.

*

He goes back for her, and lets her go again. 

As he watches her ride away, he wishes he didn’t have to.


	32. PIning with a Lot of Flirting

Jaime is what his aunt Genna lovingly calls a flirt. He prefers words like _charming _and _amiable_, the former because it implies he is on the offensive and the latter because it offends Tywin, but he’s pretty sure his aunt has the right of it. He loves to flirt, loves the way women and men are quick to fall simpering at his feet, the quiet buzz in the back of his head that they like him. It rarely goes _beyond _flirting, because then people may have expectations of him, but the point remains that he is very good at it.

Which, really, is the only reason Brienne Tarth irks him so much. It’s a matter of _pride_, at this point. And yet somehow every time their paths cross she is impervious to his cutting smiles, his jokes. He once declared himself handsome but perhaps she simply preferred pretty girls, and she’d looked at him blankly, the tiny furrow appearing in her brow, and said _No, I like men_ as if he was merely academically interested in her orientation. It’s _befuddling_. It’s _ridiculous_.

Clearly he just needs to flirt more. Lay a hand on her well-defined forearm. Compliment her eyes, which really are a striking shade of blue. Figure out what jokes make her break her careful composure and let loose with that braying laugh he’s heard a handful of times. And if, after all that work, she decides to take him out for dinner, he may just say yes.


	33. Hurt/Comfort with Bedsharing

Winterfell had fallen. Days or weeks or perhaps a moon’s turn ago now–with perpetual night, the passage of time means little. There is only dark and cold and a rapidly diminishing number of supplies. They’d gotten Sansa out, fighting all the way, and Arya had found them outside the now overrun walls and joined the small band of survivors. They had to get south before the wights, hope the armies there could turn the tide, a promise of spring whispered to the children of the group as they walked and hid and walked some more. Brienne knows though; she can read it in the single wagon they still have, in the ones they lose on every march. They are as dead as the wights they had fought, but they don’t know how to stop. 

They’d stopped for a rest at a single-roomed farmhouse, and the shield from the wind and the small fire is the most comfortable they have been in some time–they will stay for a day, they best they can reckon, before moving on, and Brienne is not surprised when Jaime comes to her. He often does, or she him, bodies slipped beneath furs, hands and mouths seeking the warmth of sunlight even if it can only be found in their pleasure. He’d spilled outside her the first night and she’d held him tight the second; they will not live long enough to see the consequences of such carelessness, and she wants these moments to last as long as they can. They never speak, not then, for what do words have against the way they move together, in the way his fingers lace through hers and hold tight?

After though… after, they hold each other close and speak of things far away. The past they cannot revisit except in their words. The places they miss, the small grains of sun-warmed Tarth sand and the sunsets of Casterly, and even the cold beauty of the north before winter had come. The future that cannot be, children who play in the surf and songs sung about the first lady knight. They talk, and they dream, and for an hour there is warmth in the world once more.


	34. Pining with Bedsharing

They had been only a few days from King’s Landing when they’d stopped at an inn for a heartier supper than their supplies would provide, and found more than they’d bargained for. Lady Catelyn, her son, his new wife… all dead, slaughtered despite guest right. Ser Jaime had been furious, thought he’d quickly masked it, and demanded they spend the night; Brienne had been surprised, until the quiet and desperate knock on her door in the early hours. She’d grabbed the heavy candlestick by the bedside and snuck over, only to find Ser Jaime on the other side.

“I need you to trust me,” he had whispered.

“What? Why?” she had asked, and then, because she was a blind fool, “I do.”

And now here she was, a moon later, lying in bed and awaiting her husband to return. Almost certainly from his sister; The Dowager Queen Cersei had taken the news of their marriage as a personal insult, and every night Jaime returned to their shared chambers smelling of perfumes, with evidence of his sister’s nails and teeth against his skin.

It was a small price to pay, to protect Sansa. Brienne would do it again in a heartbeat. But she wished that it did not come with Jaime in the early morning light, with the softness of his eyes as he gifted her what had once been Ned Stark’s sword, with gentle touches to her arm or small of her back as he escorted her through the lion’s den. She could bear almost anything, but the gods were cruel indeed to make her love her husband. 


	35. Chin over shoulder in the rain for no reason at all

It’s the first summer storm since their return to Tarth, and Brienne makes her excuses to her father’s advisors–her advisors, soon, though Selwyn Tarth refuses to say such a thing within her hearing–and slips from Evenfall to seek the cliffs. 

Jaime is there already, his eyes closed and his face turned upward to catch the warm droplets of water. The wind will pick up soon, and bring with it lightning and danger, but for now it is peaceful.

She is tempted merely to watch him, a silent observer to this simple pleasure, but there is no reason to deny herself. Stepping softly, she comes to stand behind him, and he is so lost to the freedom of the rain that he does not note her approach until her arms wrap around him, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder. He leans into her though, trusting her to bear his weight, sighing in contentment when her temple nudges against his cheek.

“How did you know to find me here?”

Brienne hums, considers her answer. “I didn’t, in truth. But it’s such a lovely place to feel the rain.”

His hand reaches out to cover hers, large and warm and strong, the calluses and scars as familiar as her own, and they say nothing else until the first cracking peal of thunder comes in from the sea.


	36. You’re my ex but I think I still have feelings for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, funny story, I wrote this and then realised that with a couple of small tweaks and a change in POV it invoked very different feelings, which is something only possible with fanfiction. What a strange and wonderful medium. So here are two nearly identical stories I could have made less similar, but that's where the interest lies.

_ Jaime _

He sees her for the first time in three years at a train station, as if it is one of those romantic dramas she had pretended not to like, curled in the corner of the sofa and wiping a tear from her eye. It stuns him, makes the breath catch in his throat and his body freeze though he hasn’t thought of her at all in… months, most likely. The occasional song on the radio, the movie trailer for what had been her favourite book, little traces of her influence brushing against his life so lightly that he could almost forget where they had come from.

“We’re no good for each other,” she’d said, the final night, and he couldn’t disagree even then. She’d been too stubborn, he’d been too occupied with his family. He was too needy, she too independent. He’d missed her, in the way you could miss the familiar, but he hadn’t grieved her absence and by the time he might have, months into therapy, she was a distant memory in the vast sea of disaster that was his life.

Except she’s on the platform across from him, her long legs tucked on an angle and her head bent over her phone, and he can’t fucking breathe. She’s too far away to make out the furrow in her brow as she reads, or whether her lips quirk in suppressed laughter. Too far, in truth, to be certain that it is her, but he _ knows _. He knows, and he wants nothing more than to bolt over the bridge, come out the other side, tap her on the shoulder and ask if she still takes cream in her coffee. It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

There’s ten minutes until his train. He could. He is, even, grabbing his bag and downing the last of his coffee, when someone joins her. He watches the man--short, dark-haired--tap her shoulder, watches her long limbs unfold as she rises to her feet and embraces him. Watches the way she comes to life for another man the way she once had for him, pressing a kiss to his cheek and taking his hand in hers, and cannot move.

(After she is gone, he pulls his phone from his pocket. Looks up her social media. It’s private, unsurprisingly, but _ in a relationship _ is all he needs to see. _ Hey _ , he sends her, _ I was thinking of you today. I’m in KL now, we should catch up some time _. (She reads it, and does not reply.))

  
  


* * *

_ Hyle _

He sees her for the first time in three years at a train station, as if it is one of those romantic dramas she had pretended not to like, curled in the corner of the sofa and wiping a tear from her eye. It stuns him, somehow, though he hasn’t thought of her at all in… months, most likely. The occasional song on the radio, the movie trailer for what had been her favourite book, little traces of her influence brushing against his life so lightly that he could almost forget where they had come from.

“We’re no good to each other,” she’d said, the final night, and he couldn’t disagree even then. She’d been too stubborn, too independent; he’d been too preoccupied, too needy in the worst ways. He’d missed her, in the way you could miss the familiar, but he hadn’t grieved the absence of _ her _ and by the time he might have she was a distant memory.

Except she’s on the platform across from him, her long legs tucked on an angle and her head bent over her phone, and he can’t stop staring. She’s too far away to make out the furrow in her brow as she reads, or whether her lips quirk in suppressed laughter. Too far, in truth, to be certain that it is her, but he _ knows _. He knows, and he wants nothing more than to cross the bridge, tap her on the shoulder and ask if she still takes cream in her coffee, if she wants to go to dinner. 

There’s ten minutes until his train. He could. He intends to, even, grabbing his bag and downing the last of his coffee, when someone joins her. He watches the man--tall, blonde--tap her shoulder, watches her long limbs unfold as she rises to her feet, embraces him. Watches the way she comes to life for another man the way she once had for him, more even, pressing a kiss to his cheek and taking his hand in hers, her head tilted just so; he watches it and cannot move.

(After she is gone, he pulls his phone from his pocket. Looks up her social media. It’s private, unsurprisingly, but _ in a relationship _ is all he needs to see. _ Hey _ , he sends her, _ I was thinking of you today. I’m in KL now, we should catch up some time _. (She reads it, and does not reply.))


	37. "I want to die in the arms of the woman I love"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I missed this in the uploading of Tumblr prompts and had a real "Duh!" moment this morning.
>
>> lilshieldmaiden asked:  
Okay, I know it's melodramatic AF, but I'm still so mad that GoT S5 teased the whole "I want to die in the arms of the woman I love" thing AND IT WASN'T BRIENNE. 😭 It'd be such a tragic fix-it but I both want it and know it would wreck me if you wrote it. 🙈
> 
> LOOK, I GOT THIS ASK AND WENT “FUCK YES, MY TIME TO MAKE PEOPLE SUFFER!” And then I realised that I am secretly a soft bitch who cannot bear the thought of a tragedy, and so... Major Character Death below, but not particularly tragic.

The maester had given him milk of the poppy and dreamwine both, and Jaime knows it means the end is near. It is better than the pain though, this strange sensation of floating just outside his body, of being barely tethered to this world and able to truly _see _it as a result. See the way the dappled sunlight comes through the open doors, bringing with it the salt-tinged air and sound of breaking waves on the shores of his home. See the quiet stream of visitors come to pay their respects to their lord, their father, their friend. It is _peaceful_, in a way he had never imagined death could be; he finds he is thankful for it, here at the end.

Brienne is beside him. Perhaps now is the time to tell her he loves her, just once more, but they have never left things unsaid, not after so long saying nothing at all. There is a comfort in this silence, in the quiet certainty of a life long-shared. He can feel her hands on him, a stroke of his cheek and the lingering brush of her knuckles against his chest. It is the truest thing in this room, and he knows when she has slipped beside him, a subtle shift of the mattress and her arms coming to embrace him. A soft sob against his ear, her lips on his cheek.

“Let go, Jaime,” she says. “You don’t have to stay, it’s time.”

His eyes drift shut, his last image the painted ceiling of their shared bedchambers; she’d had it painted with stars shortly after they’d wed, a reminder of the wide world beyond their quiet island, and the paint has begun to fade. But there is a beauty in that, once vibrant colours muted and familiar. 

When he opens his eyes again, she is waiting for him, a smile on her face and in her old blue armour. 

“You’re so stubborn,” she says. “I thought you may never come.”

He steps towards her, decades of aches and pains no longer present. Kisses her, as he has longed to every day since she’d met the Stranger three years before.

“I would have been sooner,” he admits, “but I swore to you that I would live.”

He doesn’t need to tell her, he knows, but this vow had been the most important of them all, the hardest to keep. She takes his hand, warm and solid, and tilts her head towards the balcony where they’d spent so many hours.

“One last sunset?” she asks.

He follows. 


	38. You caught me doing something dangerous and flipped out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > You caught me doing something dangerous and flipped out 
> 
> Oh man, I saw this prompt and was like “Oh yes, I love this trope!!!” and then my bastard brain went “But what if you really lean into it--they’re both knights, they know the dangers, so what if instead of it being an easily resolved part of the job it leads to serious problems?” Like chill, you bastard, I just wanted panicked fucking. Alas, it is a short fic about Brienne’s self-sacrificial nature in a modern AU. It’s an angstyish one.

Brienne eased open the front door, slipped inside and quietly removed her coat and shoes. Scrunched her nose at the fresh waft of smoke that she’d believed herself numb to. Moved into the living room. With any luck Jaime would already be in bed. 

He wasn’t.

He was on their couch, his usually sprawled form wound tight. His prosthetic wasn’t on, she noticed, and his short sleeves showed the burns halfway up his forearm. 

He didn’t even look up. “Addam called.”

She should have moved stations, after the incident. Somewhere they didn’t know Jaime, didn’t still see him as a member of the team. She hadn’t.

“He wasn’t there,” Brienne countered, braced for the fight. It was as familiar as breathing by now. “I made a call.”

“You made a stupid call.”

“I saved a kid.”

A sigh. 

“Jaime, I _saved_ him.”

“Seventeen seconds. The building had a total structural collapse _seventeen seconds_ after you got out. You’d been warned. It wasn’t a surprise.”

“No.”

She’d been on her way out, she _had_. But she’d heard crying and there’d been no choice, she had to try, had to--

“How many times is it this year?” he asked.

She didn’t know. More than he knew about. More than the average. Her silence was answer enough though, because he looked at the baby monitor on the side table, sighed again.

“She deserves better, Brienne.”

“Better than a mother who does her best?” 

He couldn’t be asking that of her. He _couldn’t_. He knew what the job was like, still missed it. 

“You…” He raked his hand through his hair, gave a low hiss. He’d yell soon, and she’d yell, and then they’d turn cold until the morning when it would be forgotten. Or not forgotten, perhaps, but carefully swept away because he understood. But he doesn’t. “You keep… It doesn’t matter how good you are. It doesn’t--”

“Jaime.”

“No, Brienne.” There was some of his bite, but it was quickly gone. “You are trying to prove something, and I don’t know why. Because you were new, or a woman, or after the... “ He exhaled. “You keep trying to _prove_ something, and when you do you don’t feel like you’ve proven enough. There’s always something greater, some risk you take because you think it’s _right_. And I can’t… If you haven’t found it yet, you’re just going to keep looking. But I can’t…”

He stood up, fist clenching. She folded her arms across her chest.

“Can’t what?” she challenged, daring him to say it.

He gestured helplessly around the room. “I can’t keep living with the reminders of it, wondering whether you won’t come home. At least when you--” he stumbled over his words, straightened. “I’m taking Jeyne to Tarth for a few days, visit your dad, stay at the cottage. When I come back we can figure out custody.”

He stood, headed towards the stairs. 

“Jaime…” 

She didn’t know what she wanted to say, what she felt. Anger would make sense. Surprise. Grief, even. But she couldn't--it was the shock, perhaps, or… He raised a hand, shrugged. Looked back at her, a small and bitter smile on his face. 

“No. I get it. The job is… it’s so easy for it to be everything. It’s important. Maybe you were right to… Maybe you were right, tonight. I always trusted your judgement.” Another sigh, exhaustion shading his familiar features, morphing them into something else. “But I can’t… I can’t let her be _nothing _either. If we… I can make her a life outside of the waiting and the worrying, and when your luck runs out, maybe there will be enough to keep the devastation from being total.”

That was unfair. It was the job, he knew the risks. Before she could find the words to argue back, tell him he was being ridiculous and he knew and he’d never minded before, he was gone up the stairs, into the dark. 

Grabbing her coat and keys, Brienne headed back to the station. They could use the extra hands, after tonight.


	39. "I’m scared but won’t admit it so you take my hand"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's the deal. If you were satisfied with the last ficlet despite its sadness, I recommend you don't read this followup to it using the prompt "I’m scared but won’t admit it so you take my hand." If, however, you really wanted them to fix it, have some hope?

Brienne _was _a firefighter. She’d been four years old when she’d decided that was what she would be, and stood by that decision with the same resoluteness she had in everything. Jaime knew that, understood it down to his marrow. But it never made it easier, not once. Not when they’d barely known each other and she’d been so fearlessly _good_, not when she’d been the one to drag him and his mangled hand from the building. _In as pair, out as a pair_, she had insisted, the firefighter’s mantra. Not the first time she rolled out of their bed to take a call he’d never answer again. Not when she’d gone back after Jeyne was born, tears in her eyes as she promised she’d be more careful, she _would_. She’d believed it then, he knew. In hindsight, he wasn’t sure he had.

He didn’t explain to Selwyn why he was on Tarth, just shrugged and said Brienne couldn’t get the time off work and he’d wanted to get out of the city. When he’d gotten to the little cottage on the far side of the island, he’d set Jeyne’s cot up in the little room with the ocean view, tried not to remember the first time he’d come with Brienne, after the accident, how she’d smiled and told him she loved him, how he’d proposed at sunset a year later, with their feet being lapped by the waves.

He took Jeyne to the beach the next morning, holding her hand as she waddled towards the water. Built terrible sandcastles and made boiled eggs for lunch. Tried to fill the silence of naptime with house hunting, turned his laptop off and pushed it away instead. Went for groceries, read extra books at bedtime to avoid questions about mama. Texted Brienne photos of their daughter, neither of them saying anything else. Two days, three. On the fourth his phone rang.

Brienne.

“Hello?”

“I talked to someone,” she said, rather than anything else. Quietly. He could hear the sound of the ferry port in the background. “I… She’s written me off work for six months, and…”

“Do you need the car?”

They kept one on Tarth rather than fight for spots on the small ferry. She huffed a laugh.

“Dad’s coming to pick me up. I wanted to surprise you, but… I didn’t know if I’d be welcome.”

_Yes, I miss you and Jeyne wants her mother, forget all I said_, nearly tumbled out, but he bit it back. He couldn’t forget, as much as he wished to. “What are you here for?”

“Everything.”

“Brienne…”

“Just--” Her voice cracked. “Will you give me a chance?”

He could picture her so easily, the way her shoulders would hunch as she spoke into her phone, probably with the same battered backpack at her feet she always brought. The tiny crescents dug into the palm of her hands just to make the call in the first place.

“We’re running low on milk,” he said. “I’ll make dinner when you get here.”

“Okay.” One word. Soft. Uncertain. It was so unlike her that it physically ached.

She arrived an hour later, Selwyn’s old truck coming up the long driveway an early warning signal. Jaime braced himself, grabbed Jeyne and headed towards the front door. Brienne was swinging from the passenger’s side and Jaime barely had time to wave goodbye to Selwyn before Jeyne began to shriek and flail as she reached for her mama and Jaime had to turn his attentions to not dropping her squirming form.

When Brienne drew level, Jaime could see the shadows beneath her eyes, the way she held herself tightly as if frightened, of him or… Jeyne launched herself from Jaime’s arms, giggling as her mother caught her.

“Hey, Trouble,” Brienne greeted her, her voice falsely cheerful; Jaime saw the way she held Jeyne a little closer than usual, buried her nose against Jeyne’s cheek. The way she closed her eyes and breathed deeply before opening them again to look at Jaime. “Milk’s in the bag.”

Jaime nodded and took the bad, not trusting the words threatening to spill from his mouth. He headed into the small kitchen, sticking the milk in the fridge and beginning to prepare dinner--it was easier than it used to be, he’d learnt to accept the shortcuts of prediced onions and tinned tomatoes, but he lingered over it all the same, trying his best not to hear Brienne’s voice drifting in from another room, the lyrical lilt she had when speaking with Jeyne. Another day he might have left the sauce to simmer and joined them, but the memory of what they could no longer be threatened to choke him so he washed the dishes, wiped the counters, read the news on his phone. Let her have these moments in peace. When the spaghetti was done and served onto the small table that barely fit the three of them, he went upstairs, knocked on the door to Jeyne’s room.

“Food,” he said, hand resting on the doorknob but not turning it, and headed back downstairs.

Dinner was… awkward, neither one willing to look at the other but playing at normalcy. When they were done, Brienne picked a sauce-covered Jeyne from her seat and brought her to Jaime.

“I’ll bathe her, and put her to bed,” she said. “Then we can… talk.”

Jaime nodded. Feeling his mouth pull into a rictus he hoped approximated a smile, he pressed a kiss to Jeyne’s head and told her goodnight. Cleared and washed the plates, put away the leftovers for lunch the next day. Wiped down the still clean sides. Moved to the living room, sitting on one end of the couch they’d bought because it was large enough for them to lie on it together. Checked the news that hadn’t changed in the last hour. Heard Brienne coming down the stairs and tucked his phone away, folded his hands and waited.

She came into the room slowly, taking a seat on the other end of the couch and running her palm over her knee. It was painful to see how stiffly she held herself, how carefully, layers and layers of defenses Jaime was uncertain he’d ever entirely defeated. But it had never been like _this_, never been… She’d never needed to defend herself from _him_ specifically.

“I--” she hesitated, tried again. “It didn’t take me four days,” she said.

Her eyes were on the carpet, her toes digging against it. Jaime did not know what to say, but she pushed on, brave despite the quaver in her voice.

“When I got--I was so _mad _at you, and I got home the next day and you were gone and… I don’t know. I missed you. Knowing you were actually gone. And that was…” Her hands twisted, and she drew a deep breath. “We always… I trust you. Sometimes I think I don’t know how to trust, but even before we… I knew you always had my back when we got a call, and that’s never…” She exhaled and he could hear the tears in her voice. “That’s never changed. Then you texted me a picture and Jeyne had a tooth I didn’t know about and I… I wondered what else I had missed.”

There was a bitter recrimination in her voice. Jaime knew that the realities of long shifts and strange hours were not always easy, on either of them really--there were days Brienne wouldn’t see Jeyne at all, despite their best efforts, and nights she worked and Jaime was alone with a child grumpy with teething or illness and he’d wanted some damned sleep before his brain shut down entirely. But they’d _known_ that, had discussed it the day they were faced with an unexpected positive pregnancy test, and like hell would he list it among her failures.

“It’s just a tooth,” he said, and saw her flinch at the kindness in his tone.

“That’s not… It wasn’t the _tooth_. I just… What else wasn’t I seeing? And the thought wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t--” she stood suddenly, practically vibrating with energy. “Do you want tea?”

“No.”

“I’m going to make tea.”

She moved into the kitchen. He could hear her fill the kettle, caught glimpses of her through the doorway as she grabbed the milk from the fridge, her fingers tapping against the metal in a nervous staccato. When she was finally done, longer than needed just for tea, she came back into the room with two mugs and suspiciously red eyes.

“I couldn’t remember if you…” she offered weakly, lifting the mugs.

“No, but…” Jaime took one from her, a tacky souvenir mug from Morne, wrapping his fingers around the warmth. “Thank you.”

She sat down again, head bent, still not looking at him.

“I called someone,” she said. “The next morning. And I… I made an appointment and I just wanted to call and tell you, that I--that I trusted you enough to _look_. But I couldn’t. I thought-- I told myself I’d see the doctor and it would be fine, I’d call you up after and tell you I’d fixed it.” Even in profile he can see her wry smile. “Turns out it doesn’t work like that.”

He snorted, remembering his own therapy, after the accident. She’d gone too, station policy after an incident, but they’d never talked about it, only that she had been cleared for duty.

“No,” he agreed. “Would be nice if it did, but…”

She smiled, small but real. “That was… I went this morning. Cat recommended her, pulled some strings to get me in so quickly. And I told the doctor about… I told her about the job, and your arm, and that Jeyne was… unanticipated, and…” another exhale, exhausted, as she set her mug aside. “I don’t know. All these justifications. I think I half-expected her to tell me that I was right, that you were wrong, or jealous, that I was doing the right thing and that made it fine. And she asked me what it had been like. The pregnancy, and the job. And I--”

Her hands were shaking, and he couldn’t… He reached out and took them, wrapped them in his own. Swept his thumb over her palm. Her skin was warm, and she squeezed his hand back. Took a deep breath and _looked _at him, raw and vulnerable and brave.

“She agreed there was… she signed me off work, and we talked about the goals of therapy, and--I want to fix this. Even if you don’t--she suggested couple’s counselling, on top of... my stuff, whether it was…” her voice cracked, then she rushed forward, “She thinks I should go twice a week, in the beginning, which is quite possibly the most damning thing, and us together too. I need-- I understand, if it’s too late, or too much, but even if it’s just a way to make it easier or--”

“Brienne--”

She didn’t stop. “It will be messy and hard, and maybe it’s not--I wouldn’t blame you, but I want to be better. A better wife, a better mother, better--”

He winced. “Brienne…”

“If it means I don’t go back, if I have to--”

“Brienne,” he said firmly, cutting through her franticness. “I never wanted you to _stop_. I didn’t think you were--I just…” He would have raked his hand through his hair, if it was not still tangled with hers. He moved closer instead, tried to find the words to explain. “I didn’t know how to make you look, and I didn’t know how to make it better _for_ you, and I didn’t…_ In as a pair, out as a pair_, right?”

She gave a wet laugh, and he pulled her hands gently so she was leaning against his shoulder.

“I’m so tired, Jaime,” she admitted, her words muffled by his shirt.

“_That_ I can fix,” he said. “Scoot over.”

She did, and he stretched across the couch, opened his arms. She settled against him, tucking her head beneath his chin, her breath evening out almost instantly. Brienne _was_ a firefighter, but she was more than that too. And perhaps, finally, she was ready to see it. He pressed a kiss to her head and closed his eyes; it wouldn’t be easy, he knew, but he was certain they were worth it. _She_ was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then they had a shitton of therapy and by the time her sick leave ended she had a healthier relationship with her job and identity and their improved communication helped them figure out the rest.


	40. Keeping Up With Yesterday (a 5+1 fic)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very long time ago I did a title ask meme on Tumblr, where titles were suggested and I said what fic I'd make it, and _Keeping Up With Yesterday_ was among them. Not quite so long ago I started speculating about Jaime with a dad bod and changing perceptions of beauty, in the form of "Five Times Brienne Saw Jaime (Mostly) Naked and One Time She Dressed Him". This is... a version of that. I still want someone to properly perv over dad bod Jaime though.

**i. King’s Landing**

Brienne is four-and-ten when her father is summoned to King’s Landing to celebrate the birth of Prince Joffrey. Brienne wishes to remain at home on Tarth, but he promises there will be a tourney and she will learn much by watching it, and so she braces herself and climbs the gangplank to the ship that will bear them to the capital.

King’s Landing is loud and foul-scented, but the streets of the city are still better than the halls of the Keep, filled with twittering ladies in bright plumage. Better than the way she is examined and found lacking, even those meaning well tell her she is a child no longer and it was not suitable to run so wild. But the tourney grounds… The tourney grounds are _marvelous_. They have been constructed outside the city walls to account for the size, a sea of brightly coloured tents and fields of battle and pavilions where the audience will watch. She is drawn to it, her mind filled with dreams of entering as someone other than Lord Tarth’s awkward daughter, of winning it all and removing her helm to show them all that she is just as good as any man. She is so distracted by these fantasies--and she knows they are fantasies--that she does not pay heed where she turns, and finds herself deep within the field of tents where men dress for the fight.

She is in a quiet corner of the field when she sees a man, wearing naught but breeches as he runs through forms with his sword. Her first thought is, ridiculously, of her father’s destrier when the stallion is groomed until his coat shines and he trots so nicely--the smooth motion of the muscles beneath skin, the gleam of it in the sun. Even the colour is the same, a golden shade of tan. But this is a man, with golden hair and a sharp jaw, who moves with a litheness Brienne has never found in herself. She watches him from the shade of the nearby tent; she tells herself it is to learn, but there is something else as well, a strange roiling sensation in her gut she has no name for. And so she watches.

It is only when he dons a crimson tunic and a golden lion’s helm that she realises the man is the Kingslayer.

Later, much later, she watches him crown the Queen with the flower crown of victory. It was a thrilling fight; Brienne does not understand why it is the moment between the tents that follows her into her dreams that night, or why she wakes so unsatisfied in the morn.

* * *

**ii. Harrenhal**

Brienne has spent enough time in army camps to have seen naked men. She’s yet to be impressed by them. For all it is lauded, a cock is just a funny little thing nestled between their legs that makes them vulnerable. If it did not make others vulnerable as well, she would laugh. But wars have started over cocks, and horrors she does her best to avoid. She wonders, sometimes, whether she would feel differently if she had stayed on Tarth and wed--whether she would think so lowly of her lord husband, or if she might find something pleasing in him. Wonders whether it might be greater than her fingers shoved hastily down her breeches, a furtive rubbing to reach her peak when she cannot resist, though the aftermath leaves her panting and vulnerable as any man.

And then she sees Jaime Lannister naked in Harrenhal.

It’s not that he’s particularly _beautiful_, half-starved and feverish. It’s not that she had fantasised about him in these intervening years. Until the moment he walks into the bath house, the truth is she’d not thought about those strange moments by the tents for so long that they are naught but a vague memory; she would not have recalled them even now if it were not for the way he moved, a faint echo of his grace then. The sharp jut of his bones in the torchlight, the sharp slice of his words in the air… they scream danger to her, but more than that they scream anger--anger that he is there, that he might see her as vulnerable as he.

She is wrong. As she cradles his unconscious body, feeling the surprising heft despite his state, the press of his ribs against her arms, she thinks she might never have been so wrong.

* * *

**iii. Winterfell**

The next time she sees him naked, she has had plenty of time to consider it. She has tried not to, they’ve been on opposing sides of this unending war for so long and then living on borrowed moments, but her dreams have no such concerns and follow her into her waking hours. She thinks of him in the White Sword Tower, gifting her Oathkeeper. At Riverrun, whole and well. The Dragonpit, the strut of his walk and his arm beneath her hand as she told him… She has had plenty of time to consider it.

It is nothing like she had thought.

They are still bruised from battle. The scars on his arm have faded almost to a silver white, so different from the glimpses she had seen beneath bandages all those years before. There is a warmth in his eyes, awe and desire both. That is what she remembers later, that she had had him naked and yet it was the look in his eyes as she dared to expose herself that made it possible.

She does more than watch him. She feels his muscles move beneath her palms, her lips. She bears his weight, but he bears hers just as well. They stumble at first, navigating two bodies unaccustomed to this dance, but it is good. They are alive and it is good.

When they are done, she kisses him softly once more and rolls over to sleep, untrusting of the beauty found in her bed, of the raw hope it exposes in her chest. She had had plenty of time to consider it, but she is not prepared.

* * *

**iv. The Red Keep **

He’s unconscious when she arrives in King’s Landing, aided by milk of the poppy to keep him still as his injuries heal. She studies his sleeping form, covered only by a thin sheet at his waist in an attempt at dignity. It has not been so long since she had known every expanse of this body, every scar. He’d made good time south and so had she, but not enough--there are new injuries that will leave their mark, and perhaps none of them so much as the death of the sister he could not save. Presuming he lives; the maester cannot be certain, has done all he can and tells her they must wait.

She holds his hand in hers, watches the rise and fall of his chest. When he opens his eyes, hours later, and smiles, croaks her name, she knows even these wounds will heal.

* * *

**v. Tarth**

She has come with them to the sea, an error Brienne is disinclined to repeat. It is a rare afternoon there are no duties to attend and they have all come down to the secret shore by Evenfall, even the babe who is more concerned with sleep than surf. And so it is that Brienne is lounging beneath the shade of some trees when Jaime emerges from the water, chiding two small figures before him saying it is time to eat. He’ll sit with the babe afterwards, she knows, though part of her is tempted to tell him to stay in the water so she can admire him instead. Admire his body lit by sunlight, admire his laughter ringing through the air. He is hers to admire, after all.

He’s so much older than the man she’d seen all those years before. His hair is heavily greyed, and his body has softened. He lifts their children more often than swords nowadays; he is still strong, but it is a strength of peacetime and it is beautiful. He swipes his sea-soaked hair from his eyes and looks in her direction, the smile gracing his face evident even at this distance. She knows now what that feeling was, back in the tents when she was little more than a child. Knows the pleasures of cock and vulnerability both. Knows what it is to fuck and to fight side-by-side, always trusting the other will be there. Knows what it is to heal. He is so much older, as is she, and so much more beautiful for it.

* * *

**[+1] Dressing Him Instead **

There is a storm coming in the day their youngest child is to wed. Brienne can see it in the way Jaime takes so long to rise from the bed, in the way his hand trembles as he eats his morning porridge. He will not complain, not today, but he takes the tinctures the maester left without protest and eyes the grey sky with suspicion.

“It’s no worse than the day we married,” Brienne tells him. The storm is close enough now her shoulder aches. “Come, I’ll help you dress.”

He grumbles but follows her to the chair near the wardrobe, and she pulls out the soft tunic It is quartered blue and gold, and the sleeves lace in such a way that it is easy enough for him to wear even on the bad days. He resents that, she knows, and when she had helped him into the shirt she leans down to press a kiss against the crook of his neck. The texture of his skin has changed, as has hers, though she could not say when--it was just Jaime, always.

She runs her hands over his arms as she slides the tunic on, brushes them against his chest as she fastens every button. Tracks the lines on his face, scars and wrinkles both, first with her eyes and then with a flutter of kisses.

“Growing old is a gift, husband,” she says, though there are days she does not quite believe it herself, days when her own bones ache and her hands are too unsteady to hold a quill.

“With you, yes,” he smiles, and he seems as young as ever.


	41. “but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.” (You Are Jeff, Richard Siken)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like a YEAR ago I had this prompt and I loved it and had so many Plans for it, and then I spontaneously wrote some random pegging for it instead? And then I meant to expand it into a proper little fic, but... Here it is, a little tumblr prompt fill for the quote: “but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.” (You Are Jeff, Richard Siken)

Their sheets are dark and the light is golden, and Jaime lies sprawled on the bed, eyes glinting as he lures her close with sharp words and tender promises, filthy and sweet in equal measure. He glances at the bedside table, just a glance, and she knows what he wants, what they… If she says no, there will be no recrimination, no judgment. 

She kisses him once, leaning over, her pale hand spread against the tanned skin of his chest. Slides open the drawer, takes it all out, the lube first, a shockingly light bottle though she knows it is full, then the harness—dark blue—and the dildo, a funny, small little thing with only one end. There are several in the drawer, ones larger or thicker, ones meant to please her too, but this feels... Safest. She doesn't want to hurt him, doesn't trust herself not to be too much, and even with this her fingers fumble as she positions it, tightens the straps. 

He smiles at her, grabs the spare pillow to place beneath his hips. He's confident, languid in his motions, unselfconscious as he exposes himself. Brienne wishes she could say the same. This they have done though, this she knows, and so she coats her fingers liberally with the lube, presses one and then two into the warmth of his ass, moves them just so until his hands clench at the sheets and his eyes close. 

She could take him apart just like this, she knows, with the beckoning crook of her fingers, _come for me_, but it is not all that he desires. She pulls her hand away and he murmurs a protest, his opening eyes dark as he watches her. He would help, she knows, wrap his lips around her cock and then apply the lube, the veins of his hands sharp as he fisted her up and down, but she's too self conscious, too aware of Brienne and her cock and all that comes with, and so she stills him with her gaze. He watches her, though, appreciative of the careful way she coats herself, diligent as ever. Watches as she urges him to cant his hips more, as she presses a kiss against his bent knee. Her cock head nudges against his asshole, and he gives a shaky breath; she almost recoils, _too much, too much_, but he reaches for her arm and she feels it—his faith in her, his strength. She pushes inside, slowly, and his mouth parts as he pants, as he tries not to squirm, as she fills him. He could take more, she reads it in the minute shifts of his hips as she bottoms out, always wanting more, determined to hold onto anything she offers, but she leans over and kisses him, holds her position. 

He's beautiful like this, glassy eyed and wanting, and she begins to move, slowly at first, so careful not to hurt him, but faster, deeper as he unravels, as he grunts and moans and thrusts against her, until they're rocking at a speed that makes the tendons of his neck tighten and she wraps her hand around his cock, guides him over the edge, the hot spurt of his spend hitting her hand. 

After, when everything is cleaned and replaced and the lamp has been turned off, he reaches out for her once more, tangles them together until they are a mass of limbs, and she feels it again, the certainty he regards her with, the love, and it blossoms in her chest, flowers and roots all at once, and she sleeps. 


End file.
